Established in 1927 in New Haven, Connecticut, by the Lender family, it became a North American leader in the marketing, distribution and sales of bagels.

His surname is a transliteration of the Yiddish word meaning "countryman" or "person living in a rural area" (cf.

As the largest sales of bagels came on Sunday morning, Saturday night was the busiest time at the bakery.

People of all ethnicities, even from out of town, began to stop by the bakery on Saturday nights to purchase fresh bagels.

[2] By the mid-1950s, the logistics of producing as many as 6,000 bagels for sale on Sunday morning, in contrast to relatively low activity the rest of the week, began to demand a solution.

As a result, in 1954 Lender perfected a method of freezing the bagels, so that the labor could be spread more evenly throughout the week.

[2] Lender developed further refinements, such as pre-slicing the bagels and packing them in polyethylene bags to keep them fresh after thawing.

To introduce bagels to an unfamiliar public, the Lender family would prepare and distribute them in supermarket aisles.

The two brothers teamed up to expand operations, with Marvin managing the bakery and Murray in charge of sales.

Until then, according to Thompson: Sam Lender mixed the bagel dough and one man cut it into small slabs and fed it into an Italian breadstick machine.

[2] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a cartoon mascot, "BagelBird", was featured on t-shirts and other mail-order merchandise to promote the brand.

Murray Lender publicized the sale in characteristic form, by holding "the marriage of the century", with Murray and Marvin escorting a 6-foot-tall (1.8 m) Lender’s Bagel, "Len", down the aisle to meet his new bride, "Phyl", a Kraft Philadelphia brand cream cheese.

Analysts criticized Kellogg's investment in a frozen product at a time when the popularity of fresh bagels was rising.

[18] In October 1999, Kellogg's sold the business to San Francisco based Aurora Foods for $275 million,[19] and ceased production at the New Haven factory in March 2000.

According to SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago-based market research firm, Lender’s is the top selling brand in each segment.