Erin Stieglitz is a mom in the Atlanta area. During the Covid-19 pandemic, her son, Rhys, “coordinated a holiday breakfast for essential workers at Northside Hospital.” Rhys “reached out to a local bakery, Goldberg’s, for help supplying food.” Erin gained insight into the amount of food that restaurants “waste” or is thrown away. Eris focused on the” bagels were going to waste.” Bagel shops sell fresh bagel every day, she so, Erin explains, at the end of the day, shops “have to throw away whatever’s left over. And so sometimes that’s a lot.”
Erin founded “Bagel Rescue, a nonprofit 501(c )(3) organization aiming to reduce food waste and support hunger relief.” As reported, each week, Stieglitz coordinates a network of over 150 volunteers to pick up and deliver bagels to food pantries, shelters and community outreach efforts across nine metro Atlanta counties.
“To date, Bagel Rescue has made more than 14,000 bagel deliveries totaling over 2 million bagels and counting. Rescue locations include places such as Clyde’s Kitchen at Crossroads Community Ministries — a program that provides meals to those in need in Downtown Atlanta.”
Jennifer Johnson, director of restaurant operations at Goldberg’s Bakery provided the following information: “Depending on location, some of them, we may only have two- or three-hundred. In some locations, we’ll have 1,500 left every day,
Johnson personalized her charitable tendency. “I’ve been that mom who couldn’t feed my kids … So to me, it’s heartbreaking to watch any kind of food go into the trash.” Reporting asserts that In Georgia, “13% of the population is food insecure, meaning they lack reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.”
The bagel may rightly be viewed as a building’s foundation. “Chef D. Chalit says there’s a variety of things that you can create with the bagels, noting that he and his staff at Clyde’s Kitchen do 50 sack lunches a day for their guests.” Chalit added: “And we make bagel sack lunch sandwiches.”
A few miles across town at the Salvation Army Outreach, Chef Alberto Bermudez uses the bagels for meatloaf and mac and cheese toppings. At Raising Expectations, an afterschool youth program in Vine City, Tamara Burke serves bagels as a snack to kids — some of whom have never tasted a bagel before.
“For them, it’s a new adventure,” says Burke, explaining that serving bagels helps build relationships and teach students other lessons.
