After a year long of pop up collaborations, local companies Air Play Espresso and Bakery officially combined with Bagels by Toast and Plate on January 20, 2025, creating a delicious collaboration. Airplay has been in business since December 1, 2010. They have two locations, a drive-thru and a bakery in downtown Sterling. The bakery location is where Air Play and Bagels by Toast and Plate have their collaboration. Air play serves a variety of made from scratch bakery sweets, espresso drinks, fruit smoothies, frozen frappes, lotus energy drinks, and loose leaf teas. They have been voted the number one favorite place for coffee in the Sauk Valley area for several years.
Unlike Air Play, Bagels by Toast and Plate is a relatively new business that opened in October 2023. Despite their recency, they quickly became a hit within the Sterling and surrounding communities. Offering a variety of food from hand rolled bagels and cream cheese pairings, to hot sandwiches and chips. Both of these companies are vastly involved within the community, sponsoring many activities around the town and appearing at the Twin City Farmers Market downtown Sterling, Ill.
This collaboration has promoted the businesses sales and customer engagement tremendously.
Airplay owner Rebecca Ryan shared, “The last year or so, we’ve been hosting Bagels by Toast and Plate in our shop as a weekly pop-up event. We have developed a really great friendship with Adrian and Abby and discovered that we have a lot of the same ideas about our businesses. When the idea to move them into our space came up, it seemed like the obvious move forward. I love being able to provide a locally made product that compliments and adds to our current menu and that we get to do it with people we believe in and enjoy being around.”
Owners of Bagels by Toast and Plate talk about the start of their business. Abby Sandoval, a co-owner and social media manager of Bagels, talks about the sparked business idea. “Adrian came home one day and said, ‘I think I want to make bagels.’ I was definitely not expecting this business venture to be on his heart but he was so excited he couldn’t turn it off.”
Owner and chef Adrian Sandoval talks about his start of the business and his love for cooking, “I’ve worked everywhere from fine dining to fast casual in places like Chicago, Milwaukee, Dubuque, Denver, and now Sterling. My wife and I moved to Denver in 2020. In
Denver, I helped out at a friend’s bagel shop temporarily. That’s what planted the seed. We moved back to Sterling in 2023 and launched Bagels the next month with our drive thru at the kitchen incubator which led to the Air play collaboration. This collaboration turned into a beautiful organic friendship with the owners and staff at Air Play. My wife and I are so grateful for the opportunity to do something like this in town.”
Overall, this collaboration is such an amazing opportunity to grow both family owned businesses and memories to last a lifetime.
