(MONEY Magazine) – AS UNDERGRADS AT HARVARD, ADAM HAVEN-Weiss and Robert Brooker dreamed of starting their own business. But by fall 1992, Haven-Weiss was at Columbia University Law School and Brooker was working at a Boston brokerage. When law school friend Andrew Bednar mentioned the reforms transforming Hungary, where his family is from, "everything just clicked," says Haven-Weiss, now 26. After scouting trips and researching the food-services business, the friends opted to open a bagel restaurant in Budapest, moving there in May 1993. (Bednar, 26, is finishing law school but will return.) "We thought it would be fascinating to bring back a product that had begun here," says Brooker, 27, noting that bagels were a Central European invention that had disappeared from the region. With each partner investing $20,000, they launched their first New York Bagel store in June 1993. A second will open this summer, and they're mulling an offer to run subway food kiosks. Says Haven-Weiss: "The opportunities here are endless. Entrepreneurs always need a country their own age, and, economically, Hungary is very young."