Last year, Max and Kayla Palmer reached across the city and united cultures with their New Year, All Year chef collaboration series. Chefs with different backgrounds worked with them to make bagel sandwiches highlighting traditional foods and celebrating different New Year’s observances.
As the collaborations were wrapping up, the couple realized they didn’t want them to end. So for 2026, the Palmers have launched Bagelshop & Friends: Spread the Love. Each month, the Donelson-based bagel restaurant will collaborate with a different restaurant partner or chef to create a limited-time schmear — lingo, as you hopefully know, for cream cheese or other spreadables on a bagel. The schmears will be available for the full month in take-home pints and served on bagels and sandwiches at Bagelshop, rather than just for a few days, as was the case with last year’s promotion. And unlike 2025’s New Year, All Year, they will also be available at the participating chefs’ restaurants.
As all Tennesseans know, January includes what should be a national holiday — Dolly Parton’s birthday on Jan. 19. So the collaborations start with White Limozeen, the rooftop restaurant at the Graduate Nashville Hotel that sports a giant pink chicken-wire bust of Dolly. The raspberry rosé and white chocolate schmear (described as a little extra glam, just like Dolly) will be paired with a Bagelshop bagel during brunch at White Limozeen and daily at Poindexter Coffee in the Graduate Nashville lobby in Midtown.
“We were just like, ‘How Dolly can we get?’” Max says. “It’s bright pink, it’s going to be fun, it’s going to be glittery, it’s going to be really cool, and just like, it’s going to feel like a sandwich that Dolly Parton would eat.”
The series includes both sweet and savory combinations. Following January’s sweet combo is another timely sweet option: king cake cream cheese created with The Gulch’s The Gumbo Bros. (Details still to come on whether there will be a baby hidden somewhere in a bagel with a schmear.)
Bagelshop Owners Max and Kayla Palmer
Because Bagelshop is a “choose your own adventure” kind of place, diners can try the special schmear on a suggested combo or build their own. “If you want to get this white chocolate raspberry on a spicy everything bagel, then all the power to you,” says Max. “I am never going to stop you, and I’m possibly going to encourage it, because I like craziness, and I know that some things just happen to work.”
With New Year, All Year, the team was developing the initiative as they went along. But now that they’re more experienced with collaborations, they’ve been able to plot out the whole year — although they’re keeping some of the announcements under wraps until later. One perk of the promotion is the opportunity to work with chefs the couples admire, Max says.
In a year when lots of things seemed aimed at highlighting our differences, Bagelshop’s Max and Kayla Palmer united us over sandwiches. The co…
March brings a chimichurri schmear in collaboration with East Nashville’s Turkey and the Wolf Icehouse, available on a special menu item that has yet to be announced.
“People used to ask us, ‘What is your favorite restaurant you’ve ever been to?’” Max says. “Going back years and years ago, me and Kayla used to travel down to New Orleans all the time, just to go eat at Turkey and the Wolf. It’s been cool since they opened [in Nashville] to work with them. It’s crazy that they even know who we are!”
Max considers the Turkey and the Wolf bologna sandwich one of his favorites. “I’m equally as excited that it’s happening. We’re getting to work with such awesome people that I respect so much in the community.”
Max appreciates that many of the collaborators do what Bagelshop hopes to do: deliver elevated flavors without a fancy fine-dining experience.
“To be able to work with Maíz de la Vida, [Julio Hernandez] is such a great chef, and I’ve always just been enamored with the work that he’s done, especially since he kind of started around the same time we did back COVID-ish,” Max says. “We were doing farmers markets at the same time, and it’s just crazy. He started doing tortilla sales at a farmers market and then built such an awesome brand for himself. It’s been so cool to see.”
The Maíz de la Vida collaboration is in May, following East Nashville’s Butcher & Bee in April, which will likely include a twist on their uber-popular whipped feta. The first half of the year wraps up with East Nashville’s Frankies 925 Spuntino.
Each collab is available for one month only.
“You have a month to come and try it, and if you like it, you can continue to try it throughout the month,” says Max. “Once it’s over, it’s time for something new, and probably something completely different.”
