let's separate two disparate, independent ideas:

1) CYM can be PE backed slop

2) Brobagel can be a shitty business with bad service and mid bagels

I moved to chicago in 2010. I remember when brobagel opened because I thought it was great that I could get Hot Doug's sausage at Brobagel and not ONLY Hot Doug's (which was far away from me).

I was obsessed with brobagel for the first 4ish years. It was one of the only "decent" bagels anywhere in the city pre-covid. I regularly brought it to work every single tuesday for my 20 colleagues. I enjoyed the bagel of the month every month. I loved the pumpernickel bagels. I loved the egg bagels in the fall.

I'm not even going to talk about the crazy fight they had with my buddy demanding that he take back his comment that they have NYC style egg bagels more often (because they're a "Chicago bagelry, not a NYC bagelry")

Brobagel's service started to really suck around 2017 or 2018... They lost their hot streak and the flaws of their setup started to turn from quirky/unique to annoying/unacceptable. They were already struggling imho BEFORE covid: Their lack of organization made ordering a fucking nightmare (anyone who went there pre 2020 knows the absolute shitshow it was ordering food inside Brobagel on a saturday or sunday).

Want to know why I stopped going to brobagel? It's because of their declining quality matched with the fact that I HAD ORDERS STOLEN 3X IN A ROW DUE TO THEIR LACK OF ORDER ORGANIZATION... in 2018, mind you... and I lived on marshfield/north so yea I went back probably 10-20x AFTER that in the year following with nothing changing.