On a Monday morning, Brookhaven resident Erin Stieglitz stops by a Vinings bagel shop and heads to the counter. But instead of leaving with a cheddar-jalapeño or blueberry bagel, she’s out the door with seven huge bags, saved and frozen from the weekend. Staff members help carry the load. After stashing 350 bagels in her backseat—the trunk’s full of bagels, too—Stieglitz heads to another bagel stop on the Westside before delivering the goods to two Atlanta food pantries. Seven days a week, more than 300 volunteers make similar rounds across more than a dozen Georgia counties, all of them part of the sustainable nonprofit Bagel Rescue.
Stieglitz, a mom of two boys, 15 and 10, is the nonprofit’s founder and “chief rescue officer.” The concept of “rescuing” bagels began when her family wanted to feed frontline workers during the pandemic. Her oldest son, then 9, called Goldbergs Fine Foods, which yielded hundreds of day-old bagels that the family donated to Northside Hospital. Stieglitz learned other restaurants had unsold bagels going to waste, which sparked a plan to rescue the extras and feed hungry neighbors.
“When I think back to that first delivery, I think, Wow, what a journey,” Stieglitz says. “It was a chance discovery that changed my life.”…