Jersey bagel shop sued by D.C.’s Call Your Mother in branding dispute

The adage goes, “If mom says, ‘No,’ call grandma.” So if grandma says, “No,” do you call a lawyer?

Popular D.C. bagel chain Call Your Mother is doing just that after claiming that a shop in Long Branch, N.J., is cramping their style, filing a trademark lawsuit within the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

Call Your Bubbi, a beach town cafe and kosher-certified bagel shop, opened last year within the Wave Resort and offers your classic bagel fare.

Andrew Dana and Daniela Moreira, the married couple behind Call Your Mother, say the Jersey cafe is intentionally using a “confusingly similar” name and branding, which can harm their nearly six-year-old company that has about 25 locations, in the Washington area and six in Colorado. The dispute has quickly gone viral within the food scene and bagel-loving communities.

“I cannot believe how this has blown up,” Dana said. “It has taken on a life we never expected.”

Call Your Bubbi owner David Mizrahi did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Inquirer.

Dana said the couple first found out about the Long Branch cafe when a neighbor texted a photo of its storefront, asking if Call Your Mother had expanded to New Jersey. From there, they looked at Call Your Bubbi’s online and social media presence.

Dana and Moreira own the trademark for the phrase call your mother for use as a deli, cafe, or restaurant, according to court documents. They’ve also trademarked their logo, a rotary phone (which mimics the shape of a bagel). In its branding suite, the Call Your Mother text often circles around the rotary graphic.

Call Your Bubbi also uses a round image with its name similarly circling around its bagel logo. According to the Washingtonian, the cafe also at one point used a rotary phone motif on its merch. Both shops use hues of pink and blue in their branding.

“People might think we’re sort of hunting this stuff out — that’s not the case at all," Dana said. “It looks just like our logo. We tried for months and months to get in touch with the owner. We got hung up on. We didn’t know what else to do.”

At one point, Dana told the Washington Post that he noticed a tagline on the top of Call Your Bubbi’s website: If Mom says, “No,” call your Bubbi.” He told the Post, “I just felt like they were goading us.”

In August, the couple sent Mizrahi a cease-and-desist letter, court documents show. They say they never heard back or saw a change in the cafe’s branding. Last Tuesday, they officially filed the lawsuit.

Call Your Mother is being represented by Philadelphia-based attorney Matthew Homyk, a partner in the intellectual property group of Blank Rome LLP. Homyk didn’t respond for comment as of publication time.

“In Jewish culture, the terms ‘mother’ and ‘bubbi’ both denote a caring and nurturing Jewish matriarch,” the lawsuit says. “Both marks evoke the same core idea — a warm and loving (but also somewhat instructive or scolding) prompt to call your mother or grandmother, and to go grab some coffee and bagels while you’re at it."

The suit noted that Mizrahi‘s original incorporation in March 2024 was for “Bubbies Bagels,” but that “sometime thereafter,” he began using the Call Your Bubbi label instead.

The Jersey Shore cafe appears to use a blend of both names as of publication time. On Yelp, it’s Call Your Bubbi. On Google Maps, it’s billed as “Bubbi Bagels @ Wave Resort,” but its phone line and merch still identify it as “Call Your Bubbi.”

The shop’s web domain is bubbibagels.com, but the top of its website says Call Your Bubbi. Similarly, its Instagram username is @bubbibagels, but its icon is the contested Call Your Bubbi round logo.

Dana said they saw no issue with the cafe going by “Bubbi Bagels,” or something similar.

“He can call it Bubbi’s, he can call it Mother’s, I don’t really care. But Call Your Bubbi is so close, we had to sort this out,” Dana said. Still, Dana says, Mizrahi won’t return his calls.

Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney not affiliated with the litigation, says the suit makes for a captivating case study. He posted his own analysis of the brand dispute on LinkedIn and says he believes Call Your Mother has a strong case for trademark infringement.

“As a trademark attorney who grew up in a Jewish family, I can tell you that those two names draw from the same emotional well,” he said. “If this case goes to trial, the judge or jury will have to determine whether an average consumer would think these brands are owned by the same company.”

Restaurant-related trademark disputes aren’t new. In Philly, Chickie’s & Pete’s has a grip on the use of crabfries thanks to owner Pete Ciarrocchi registering the phrase as a trademark back in 2007. Since then, his lawyers have sent cease-and-desist letters to restaurants nationwide for using the phrase.

(It has also sparked some cheeky clapbacks, like Betty’s Seafood Shack in Margate, which now calls its version of the fries “For ‘Pete’s’ Sake.“)

The lawsuit is asking for the court to rule that Call Your Bubbi illegally used Call Your Mother’s trademark materials and engaged in unfair competition and to order that they permanently stop using the name or anything similar.

They also want all infringing materials destroyed, a report proving compliance, and financial remedies, including Call Your Bubbi’s profits, along with damages, interest, attorney fees, and other appropriate penalties.

“We want him to be able to have his business and us to have ours,” Dana said. “The last thing we want to do is spend money on legal or focus on this. We want to focus on making bagels — and figure out how to finish this quickly."