Sebastian grew up in the New York bagel store business. He owned and operated multiple Bagelicious Hot Bagel stores while attending Pace University in NYC as a finance major. He was a natural foodie and bagels were his first love. His cousin Arnold, who taught him the business, developed a formula that enabled them to make the bagel dough in one location, freeze the bagels, and ship them to other stores to be freshly baked on the premises. As the number of Bagelicious stores grew, so did the production of bagels. When other companies caught a whiff of what was baking in the Bagelicious kitchen, the demand spread, and Arnold and Sebastian began a wholesale business.
In 1989, they refined a proprietary system to proof, seed, partially-bake and flash freeze the Arnie’s bagels for store owners that did not have baking skills. This was the beginning of the “par-baked” bagel business. It was the “Aha!” moment to supply tens of thousands of existing successful restaurants and stores across the world with the highest quality authentic New York bagels they can fresh bake in their stores. This lead to presenting their proprietary par-baked bagel program to Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway, and McDonald’s.
In 1991, Sebastian Rametta co-founded Arnie's Bagelicious Bagels Inc., a wholesale manufacturer of all-natural, premium, par-baked, authentic New York bagels. Rametta and his partner made the sales calls to Arnie's major customers including McDonald's, Disney World, Dunkin' Donuts, Subway, Roy Rogers, Friendly's, A&P Supermarkets, King's Supermarkets, HMS Hosts, and many other major national chains. Rametta lead the implementation and development of Dunkin’ Donuts’ game-changing bagel program that still exists today. The Arnie’s Dunkin’ bagel program introduced 12 varieties of their premium NY Bagels to Dunkin customers instead of 3 varieties of lenders bagels which immediately made Dunkin a bagel category leader! He also lead the development of Arnie’s in-store supermarket bagel bakery business. Arnie’s provided New York supermarkets such as Waldbaum’s, A&P, and Key Food with ovens to fresh bake on premise bagels and other customer favorite bakery items pioneering in-store bakery departments. Today, in-store bakeries are a profit center for supermarkets across the nation. Arnie’s sales grew to over $20 million in less than three years!. Sebastian played a pivotal role to meet the massive customer demand for Arnie’s Bagelicious Bagels. He oversaw the design/build of factories in Brooklyn and Nebraska with capacity for consistent supply of $50 million in bagels annually. Arnie’s Bagels were then approved for all Dunkin’ Donuts stores with estimated demand of $60 million in bagels annually. In August 1994, Arnie’s Bagelicious Bagels was sold to Quaker Oats for $37 million.
As part of the senior management with Arnie’s for Quaker Oats Mr. Rametta, with support from New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and NYC Economic Development, was responsible for building a 70,000 sq. ft. bagel factory in Staten Island, NY with capacity to make 3,000 dozen bagels an hour. His vision and skill in sales, quality control, forecasting demand, and building manufacturing facilities and restaurants made Arnie’s a win.
