Cleo Bagels team opens Little Bean, a coffee shop and bakery

At this new West Philly coffee shop, BYOB stands for “bring your own bagel” — so long as it’s from next door.

Beloved bagel store Cleo Bagels has expanded one storefront over at 5015 Baltimore Avenue with Little Bean, a coffee shop with plans to serve espresso in homemade mugs and a limited menu of sweet treats that include a bagel-inspired chocolate chip cookie. The coffee shop opened officially in mid-February, replacing art gallery Ceramic Concepts.

Alex Malamy opened Cleo Bagels in September 2023 after seven years of running Dodo Bagels, a successful Clark Park Farmer’s Market pop-up where he sold classic bialys and delightfully crusty-yet-chewy bagels known for their signature swirl. At Cleo — which is named after Malamy’s 7-year-old mutt — lines snake out the door on most mornings as customers wait for unorthodox breakfast sandwiches such as the famous Ramen Thing, which comes loaded with soy-marinated soft boiled eggs, pickled ginger, and a slightly spicy togarashi mayo.

Little Bean, Malamy and his wife and business partner Ilana Silber said, is both a continuation of the Cleo brand and a means to the end: The bagel shop is so cramped it doesn’t have room for indoor seating or a behind-the-counter espresso machine. Regulars, they said, wish Cleo had both.

“Having a space like this is significant for our customers,” Malamy said. “They can come and get a bagel and then they have a fighting chance of getting a table instead of being forced to walk home.”

Little Bean has 18 indoor seats, a mix of counter seating, two-top tables, and a window bench. The space is decked out in the same exact color palette as Cleo; melon-painted walls and a deep green-tiled coffee bar (with matching backsplash) create cohesion between the neighbors.

Even the coffee shop’s logo is bagel-inspired. Drawn by illustrator Jess Martin, it features the couple’s 5-year-old three-legged terrier mix Bean rolling around in a pile of lavender, fennel, thyme, sesame and herb sprigs — the same seasonings for Malamy’s Frenchthing bagel. Bean, Silber said, has taken well to being a muse.

“She loves that people recognize her on the street and likes to wiggle over for some pets,” said Silber, Cleo and Little Bean’s head of operations. “She was destined for stardom.”

Little Bean uses dark roast espresso from Necessary Coffee Roasters, a small batch line of beans from Lancaster, Pa.’s Passenger coffee house and roastery, plus the brand’s Ethiopian Agaro as their go-to for drip coffee. It’s a way to differentiate from Cleo, according to Malamy, which is only able to brew no-frills dark roast for hot and iced coffees.

Everything else at Little Bean is homemade, Malamy said, from the vanilla and mocha syrups on offer to a soon-to-be-available chai concentrate and the mugs hot drinks are served in.

Silber has been making ceramics since 2018, and is currently hand-throwing and glazing all 60 of what will eventually become Little Bean’s mugs. Her first 20 are already on display in shades of melon, butter yellow, and jade green behind the shop’s coffee bar.

“It’s a labor of love,” Silber said, but a necessary one. The goal for both businesses, Malamy said, “is to quirk things up a little bit.”

Opening Little Bean has been an excuse for Malamy to delve deeper into baking. The coffee shop’s initial menu includes just four sweets: A giant chocolate chip cookie, an oatmeal cranberry cookie, a “surprisingly vegan” blueberry muffin, and the Applething, a cross between an apple cider donut and Jewish apple cake.

Unlike the espresso, all of Little Bean’s pastries will also be available next door at Cleo.

“I’m definitely not a pastry chef,” said Malamy. “What’s cool about the types of treats we’re offering is that they are kind of like ‘the home baker special.’” In other words, stuff anyone can bake at home, but better.

Malamy’s proudest non-bagel bake is the Applething, a muffin-shaped apple cake rolled in a layer of cinnamon sugar that makes you want to lick your fingers. The form is inspired by the iconic dirt bombs from Cottage Bakery in Orleans, Ma., a hyper-local New England treat that amounts to a butter-coated nutmeg muffin. Across both storefronts, Malamy said, the hybrid pastry sells out regularly.

His latest creation is a thin-yet-chewy chocolate cookie that Malamy said is in its final stages of recipe development. The recipe has gone through four iterations, all of which have borrowed heavily from Cleo’s bagel dough. It uses similar ratios of the flour, rye, whole wheat, and diastatic malt — only instead of adding sesame and poppy seeds, Malamy mixes in bittersweet Valhrona chocolate.

Neighbors, Malamy said, have welcomed Little Bean with open arms, selling out the coffee shop’s baked goods most days. After all, not every morning calls for a bagel.

“Sometimes you don’t want to wait in line behind the guy whose ordering six bagel sandwiches,” he said. “Sometimes you just want a coffee and a muffin.”

Little Bean, 5015 Baltimore Ave., cleobagels.com/little-bean. Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily.