Moonrise Bagels Shark Tank: The Stuffed Bagel Walking Into Lori Greiner's $34 Million Memory

Moonrise Bagels, the Woodstock, New York, shop that bakes comfort food inside hand-rolled bagel dough, pitches the Sharks on Season 18, Episode 7 ("Hoop Dreams"), Wednesday, November 11, 2026, at 10 p.m. ET on ABC. Founders and married couple Ali Chetkof Rhodes and Jeremy Rhodes confirmed the appearance on Instagram on November 5.

The deal terms stay secret until the episode airs. But one detail is public, and it shapes how this pitch should be read: Lori Greiner has done a stuffed-bagel deal before. Her Bantam Bagels investment became one of Shark Tank's best-known food exits and then one of its quietest disappearances. Moonrise walks into the Tank with that history sitting on the panel.

Stuffed bagels fresh from the oven at Moonrise's West Village shop, 58 W 8th St, Manhattan. Photo: amNY

What Moonrise Bagels sells

Each Moonrise bagel is hand-rolled around a scratch-made filling, then boiled and baked like a regular bagel. The menu runs from bacon, egg and cheese to Buffalo chicken, pastrami Reuben, cheese pizza, eggplant parm and a Philly cheesesteak, with a vegan barbecue tempeh option and dipping sauces such as ranch for the Buffalo chicken.

Cut open: the filling is baked inside the dough, not spread on top. Photo: amNY

The pitch to customers is that a stuffed bagel is a full meal, not a breakfast side. Jeremy Rhodes has described the company's goal as breaking bagels out of the breakfast category. In May 2026 the company went further and made every shop 100% stuffed, dropping plain bagels entirely and adding an espresso bar.

The founders and the origin story

The business began during the pandemic in the couple's small Woodstock apartment. While prepping for a New Year's Eve party, they stuffed leftover pizza fillings into bagel dough. Friends wanted more, and by May 2021 they were selling stuffed bagels from the apartment.

Jeremy came from restaurant operations, including time at Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group. The couple staggered their exits from corporate jobs: Jeremy went full-time to staff the first shop while Ali kept a paycheck before joining. Ali grew up in Woodstock and went to Emory University in Atlanta, which made the Atlanta taping something of a homecoming.

The West Village shop, Moonrise's first in New York City, opened December 5, 2025. Photo: amNY

Only on GAG: Moonrise is pitching Lori Greiner's own case study

Shark Tank has already funded a stuffed bagel, and Lori Greiner was the Shark who did it. In January 2015, Brooklyn couple Nick and Elyse Oleksak pitched Bantam Bagels, bite-sized bagels stuffed with cream cheese. Lori paid $275,000 for 25%. Here is what happened next, set against Moonrise's numbers.

Bantam Bagels founders Nick and Elyse Oleksak, whose 2015 deal with Lori Greiner is Shark Tank's stuffed-bagel precedent.

Three numbers from that comparison are worth sitting with.

1. Bantam's exit was only about 1.7x sales. Lancaster Colony's T. Marzetti paid $34 million for a business doing roughly $20 million in annual net sales. That is a modest multiple for a brand that grew more than tenfold in eight months after its episode. Stuffed bagels can sell, but buyers price them like bakery goods, not like tech.

2. Lori's paper return was about 31x. Her 25% of a $34 million sale works out to $8.5 million against a $275,000 cheque. That figure ignores any later dilution or deal terms that were never published, so treat it as the best-case ceiling. It still explains why a stuffed bagel gets Lori's attention.

3. The win didn't last. After the pandemic squeezed supply chains and Starbucks dropped the product, Marzetti exited Bantam in 2022 and the brand was discontinued. The founders had given up control and were not part of that decision.

Moonrise is built almost the opposite way. Bantam was a wholesale product that lived or died by big accounts. Moonrise is a restaurant brand that sells mostly through its own counters, at full meal size. That is slower to scale, but no single buyer can switch it off. The question for the Sharks is whether Moonrise wants to become Bantam: frozen, in grocery freezers, wholesale. Or whether it wants to stay a destination shop with a mail-order side.

Only on GAG: how fast Moonrise is actually selling

Moonrise has published two sales milestones. Lining them up gives a rough sales speed that the company has never stated itself.

• The first 50,000 stuffed bagels took about 25 months, roughly 2,000 a month or about 66 a day, almost all from the single Woodstock shop.
• The next 50,000 took about 14 months, roughly 3,570 a month or about 117 a day, after Poughkeepsie and the Kingston window opened.
• That is a 78% jump in pace, driven mostly by adding shops. The Manhattan store, which drew lines out the door for months, opened after the last published milestone, so the current pace is probably higher still.

Now compare with Bantam. Reports from the time say Bantam sold more than 100,000 bagels while its Shark Tank segment was still airing. That is roughly what Moonrise sold in its first three and a bit years. The two aren't the same unit: Bantam's were bite-sized. But it shows the scale of the "Shark Tank effect" for bagels, and how much shipping capacity Moonrise will need on the night of November 11.

What the Sharks are likely to push on

• Margins and labour. Every bagel is hand-rolled around a scratch-made filling. That is a strong story and an expensive process. Expect Kevin O'Leary to ask about cost per bagel and whether production can be automated without losing the product.
• Channel. Lori knows the wholesale and QVC route from Bantam. Barbara Corcoran built her name in New York real estate and may care more about the shops. Moonrise told local press it has no current plans to expand and is focused on improving its three shops. That sits awkwardly with asking Sharks for growth money.
• Shelf life. Meat and egg fillings make frozen shipping and retail harder than cream cheese did for Bantam.
• The "original" claim. Moonrise calls itself "home of the original stuffed bagel." Bantam was stuffing bagels in Brooklyn from 2013, and Lori invested in it. Expect that to come up.

Where to buy Moonrise Bagels

• Woodstock: 68 Tinker St, Woodstock, NY
• Poughkeepsie: 26 Winslow Gate Rd, across from Marist University
• Manhattan: 58 W 8th St, Greenwich Village, open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily
• Nationwide: frozen stuffed bagels via Goldbelly

How to watch the Moonrise Bagels episode

Shark Tank Season 18, Episode 7 airs Wednesday, November 11, 2026, at 10 p.m. ET on ABC. It streams on Hulu the next day. Also in the episode: a trailer for basketball and football arcade games, size-inclusive underwear for men, and a scented nose cover for dads on diaper duty. Sharks on the panel include Daymond John, Barbara Corcoran, Kevin O'Leary, Lori Greiner and Rashaun Williams.

This page will be updated with the ask, the offers and the final deal as soon as the episode airs.

More from Shark Tank Season 18

• Shark Tank Season 18 episode guide and Dilution Index, every product, deal and valuation haircut this season
• Loli-Med, Lori Greiner's Season 18 royalty deal
• Donna's Pickle Beer, the food pitch that went wrong at the tasting
• Nutcase, the cashew milk with a $10M-to-$500K valuation gap

FAQ

Is Moonrise Bagels on Shark Tank?

Yes. Moonrise Bagels appears on Shark Tank Season 18, Episode 7, airing November 11, 2026, at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

Who owns Moonrise Bagels?

Married couple Ali Chetkof Rhodes and Jeremy Rhodes, who started it in their Woodstock, New York, apartment in 2021.

Where is Moonrise Bagels located?

Woodstock and Poughkeepsie in New York's Hudson Valley, and the West Village in Manhattan. Frozen bagels ship nationwide through Goldbelly.

Did Moonrise Bagels get a deal on Shark Tank?

The result is not public until the episode airs. This page will be updated on November 11.

Has Shark Tank invested in a stuffed bagel before?

Yes. Lori Greiner invested $275,000 for 25% of Bantam Bagels in 2015. It sold for $34 million in 2018 and was discontinued in 2022.