D.C.’s Call Your Mother bagel chain sues Jersey store, claiming it stole its shtick

D.C.-based bagel chain Call Your Mother is suing a bagel store in New Jersey called Call Your Bubbi, alleging it’s a rip-off.

Call Your Mother refers to itself in marketing as a “Jew-ish deli” and said in a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey on Tuesday that Call Your Bubbi steals its brand.

The New Jersey store includes the “call your” element and a Yiddish word for grandmother. Hence, says Call Your Mother, Call Your Bubbi is engaged in trademark infringement.

“For Jewish delis — whose brand narratives often center on tradition, comfort, and family recipes — 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 grab some coffee and bagels while you are at it,” lawyers for Call Your Mother said in the complaint.

The D.C.-based chain asked the court to mandate that Call Your Bubbi stop going by that name and to destroy “all labels, signs, prints, packages, wrappers, receptacles, advertisements, promotional materials, website content within Defendant’s control, and any other materials in its possession, custody, or control” bearing anything that could be seen as infringing on Call Your Mother.

Use of an alternative name, such as Bubbies Bagels, the name of the LLC behind Call Your Bubbi, could settle the issue, Call Your Mother says.

“We have no problem with the name ’Bubbi Bagels.’ If the owner would talk to me, I’m sure we could sort something out very quickly,” Call Your Mother co-founder Andrew Dana told Washingtonian.

Bubbies Bagels has not responded to a request for comment.