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A few weeks ago, I found myself standing in Suburban Square (an outdoor mall area in the Philadelphia suburbs) at 7 a.m., on my way to a workout at Lifetime Fitness, staring at a line that didn’t quite make sense.
It was long. Really long.
And it was for a bagel shop.
At first glance, there was nothing remarkable about it. We’ve all seen bagel stores come and go here on the Main Line. It’s a well-understood category, with fairly established norms around product, experience, and even pricing.
So I found myself asking a simple question:
What’s different here?
Curiosity got the better of me. I waited a couple of weeks for the long lines to subside, went in, and asked.
The answer was surprisingly thoughtful.
PopUp Bagels isn’t just selling bagels. They’re redesigning how bagels are consumed.
Instead of slicing them, they serve them hot and encourage you to “rip and dip.” You tear off pieces and pair them with (or, shall I say, plunge them into) a range of flavored spreads: garlic butter, scallion cream cheese, and others. It’s tactile. It’s social. It slows you down, just enough to make the experience feel different.
And importantly, it disrupts a deeply ingrained habit -- quite literally.
Most of us don’t think about how we eat a bagel. It’s automatic: slice, toast, spread, eat. What PopUp Bagels has done is intervene in that routine, not by changing the core product, but by redefining the behavior around it.
That’s a subtle move. But it’s a powerful one. And one that seems to have caught the local public's attention.
If you go back to Charles Duhigg’s framework in The Power of Habit, most automatic behaviors follow a loop: cue, routine, reward.
What PopUp Bagels has done is re-engineer the routine.
The cue is familiar: morning, hunger, maybe post-workout. The reward is still there: a warm, satisfying breakfast. But the routine -- the act of eating -- has been intentionally redesigned to feel novel and, arguably, more engaging.
James Clear, in Atomic Habits, talks about the importance of making behaviors attractive and satisfying. Their moniker, “Rip and dip,” does exactly that. It adds a small element of physicality, friction (you have to tear the bagel), but in doing so, it creates a more immersive and memorable experience.
And Nir Eyal’s Hooked model would suggest that variability -- different dips, combinations, ways of eating -- introduces just enough novelty to keep people coming back.
In other words, this isn’t about bagels.
It’s about designing a new habit.
I had a similar reaction recently with a very different kind of business: SWTHZ, a contrast therapy studio (sauna and cold plunge) that’s been gaining traction locally here in Philadelphia.
Like many boutique fitness concepts, their goal is straightforward: turn occasional users into regulars. SoulCycle, [SolidCore], Barry's... they all are designed to keep you coming back.
But what stood out to me was how intentionally SWTHZ's pricing model supports that goal.
The first few sessions are relatively easy to access. Low friction. Low commitment. It invites trial. A few trials in fact, just enough to impart the physical sense of rejuvenation.
But after that, things shift.
If you want to continue on a pay-per-session basis, the price increases substantially. The economics start to feel uncomfortable. The clear signal is: this isn’t designed to be an occasional activity.
Instead, the model nudges you toward a subscription.
From a behavioral standpoint, this is classic.
We all understand the notion that habits are driven by rewards and reinforcement; but one of the more underappreciated ideas in behavioral science is the role of friction.
We often talk about making desired behaviors easy. But the inverse is just as important: making undesired patterns harder to sustain.
SWTHZ does both.
They reduce friction at the point of entry -- making it easy to try, explore, and experience the benefits.
But they introduce friction around inconsistency.
If you want to remain intermittent, you pay for it -- literally.
James Clear frames this as environment design: shaping the conditions around a behavior to make the desired path the path of least resistance. SWTHZ is doing this economically rather than physically, but the principle holds.
And over time, that structure encourages repetition.
Repetition, of course, is the foundation of habit.
Now, neither of these examples comes from pharma. But that’s precisely why they’re useful.
They force us to step outside of our category and look at behavior more objectively.
Because at the end of the day, whether we’re talking about choosing a therapy, initiating treatment, or staying adherent over time, we are dealing with the same underlying mechanics:
What PopUp Bagels reminds us is that even in highly familiar categories, there is opportunity to redefine the routine: to make an experience more engaging, more memorable, and more distinct.
What SWTHZ illustrates is that habit formation isn’t just about messaging or education. It can be structurally reinforced through thoughtful design -- in this case, pricing that rewards consistency and discourages intermittency.
For insights and analytics professionals, this suggests a slightly different set of questions:
Where is there friction today; and is it helping or hurting us?
Are we making the desired behavior easy to start, and easier still to repeat?
And importantly:
Because those are not the same thing.
A campaign can drive awareness. It can even drive initial action. But if the underlying experience -- clinical, logistical, emotional -- doesn’t support repetition, the behavior won’t sustain.
If there’s a broader takeaway here, it’s this:
We should be thinking less about influencing individual decisions, and more about shaping behavioral systems.
Nir Eyal describes habits as behaviors done with little or no conscious thought. That’s the end state. But getting there requires intentional design across multiple touchpoints: the cue, the routine, the reward, and the surrounding context.
That’s as true for a bagel as it is for a therapy.
And while the stakes are obviously different in pharma, the underlying opportunity is the same. To move beyond communication. To think more deliberately about how behaviors are initiated, reinforced, and ultimately embedded.
Because when we get that right, we’re not just changing what people think.
We’re changing what they do.
