The Rainbow Bagel store closed 'due to health concerns' — fame outlived the business

Scot Rossillo, a longtime baker who called himself the 'World Premier Bagel Artist', had sold oddly shaped and coloured bagels out of Brooklyn since the mid-1990s. But it was only after a video of his rainbow bagel rippled across the internet around 2015 that the phones and the queues began — lines of fans, knockoff rainbow bagels, and a signature confection the world recognised on sight.

The viral moment was a marketing gift and a management trap. Demand at his two stores — one in Park Slope, one on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg — became so intense that he had to close temporarily just to catch up. When the fad faded, the knockoffs stayed and the novelty became a commodity anyone could bake.

The business that sat on top of the viral hit never stabilised. In February 2016 the shop shut down indefinitely, and in May 2019 state authorities issued warrants and seized the Williamsburg location over unpaid taxes, putting a second closure on the record before the brand had recovered.

Rossillo reopened in Park Slope in 2020, but the final closure came in May 2022: the shop's Instagram announced it was closing 'due to health concerns', and the location was marked permanently closed. The rainbow bagel that made the business famous had outlived the business itself.