BOSTON -- At Eric’s LA Patisserie café in Worcester, they won’t actually offer you a baby with your bagel, but if you’re expecting, they will supply you with the next best thing: a small container of “Labor-Inducing Cream Cheese.”

I know what you’re thinking: But how does it taste?

Actually, not too bad at all.

Which is not entirely surprising since, though owner Eric Jasmin won’t admit it, I suspect his eye-catching cream cheese is actually Philadelphia brand by any other name.

But after all, that’s a matter for Eric and his lawyers.

What I can tell you is that he’s a fun, funny, talented foodie, who also happens to be very creative at marketing his small café on Commercial Street, in the shadow of Worcester’s City Hall.

“It just sort of happened by itself,” explains Jasmin. “I was asked to send up some bagels and cream cheese to a woman who was about a week overdue, she had the baby the next day, and sent me a note saying it must have been the cream cheese!”

And, savvy businessman that he is, who was he to argue?

And the truly wacky thing is that there are numerous women who will tell you with a straight face that, for all they know, it was Jasmin’s labor-inducing cream cheese that put their pregnancy over the line and into delivery.

In fact, Eric has some of the cards and letters and photos to at least prove the fact that expecting moms have tried the cream cheese, delivered a lovely baby with or without Eric’s assistance, and then sent “Thank You” notes with the same basic message of, “Hey, who knows ... ?”

Well, you would think a trained, experienced obstetrician would know, right?

Wrong.

At least Dr. Dawn Tasillo won’t come out and say it’s all hooey. Which made me think that Jasmin’s marketing skills are even more impressive than I first thought.

I went directly from the LA Patisserie café, cream cheese in hand, to the UMass Memorial Medical Center . There was a brief wait while Dr. Tasillo finished up a C-section delivery.

She was remarkably gleeful and energized, and immediately gushed, “I have had so many women tell me they’ve tried that cream cheese!”

For all I know, the cream cheese may well be covered under the new comprehensive health care overhaul. But for now, I asked Dr. Tasillo the obvious: is there any actual medical reason that the cream cheese could induce labor?

Her response was startlingly vague and noncommittal -- and surely cause for jumping up and down if your name is Eric Jasmin and you happen to market labor-inducing cream cheese.

“We simply do not know exactly and precisely what causes labor to begin at a certain point.”

But could it be the damned cream cheese, doctor?

“By itself, probably not, but sometimes the power of mental suggestion can have a powerful effect on women who are anxious and overdue.”

That sound of a muted cheer is emanating all the way from Worcester and the small cramped café kitchen where they scoop the cream cheese into little half-pint clear containers.

Eric is also happy to provide an expecting customer with a bib, too. (Emblazoned with his advertising, naturally.)

Sure enough, just before I left, a very pregnant woman did indeed drop by for a muffin and said she had tried the cream cheese. (At that point, to no immediate effect, it should be noted.)

Turns out she is a patient of Dr. Dawn Tasillo.

Who, for the record, tasted the cream cheese for the first time when I offered it to her. She liked it, and said there seemed to be “some extra taste or something in there, don’t you think?”

Perhaps it’s the secret labor-inducing ingredient.

(Watch Chronicle listings for Ted’s upcoming story, “Who Knew?”)