Family Bagels serves tie-dye option in Plainview

For all their many iterations — sesame, garlic, pumpernickel, cinnamon-raisin — bagels traditionally come in one color: brown. But Family Bagels in Plainview is making an eye-catching exception to the rule: tie-dye.

The brightly multi-colored bagels made their debut in October and have become a bestseller for the 10-year-old shop.

Owner Neal Schatt said inspiration came from an unlikely source. “We’ve always made a lot of colored bagels for various community causes,” he said. “Purple bagels for a local teacher who passed away from pancreatic cancer, green bagels for St. Baldrick’s Foundation [which raises money to fight childhood cancers]. Every October we make pink bagels for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. My wife and I got to talking about how the young children got all excited about the pink bagels — without really understanding their meaning. So we decided to make something that would be appealing for its own sake, and we came up with the tie-dye bagels.”

Until his customers clued him in, Schatt was unaware of the recent viral sensation engendered by the multi-colored bagels, “rainbow bagels,” made by The Bagel Store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

It took Schatt and his team a while to get their technique down — the bagels needed to be boldly marbled without the four colors, which change every day, blending too much into muddiness.

Tie-dye bagels are $1.50 at Family Bagels, 140 Manetto Hill Rd., Plainview, 516-681-4949, familybagels.com. The store is open from 5:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, to 4 p.m. on Saturday and to 3 p.m. on Sunday.