Bagels aren’t the only thing popular in this Brooklyn neighborhood.
A local attorney has accused the owner of a popular Crown Heights bagel shop of deliberately destroying old bagels, including coating them with chemicals and food scraps, to prevent do-gooder trash diggers from donating their leftovers. ing.
“The bagels that come out of there are perfectly delicious,” Ted Rao, 47, a Social Security and disability attorney, recently told the Post.
“It’s something you baked in the morning, so you shouldn’t throw it away.”
Mr. Rao became a neighborhood celebrity on Franklin Street six months ago when he began digging through trash cans at the local chain Bagel Pub and refilling bags with dough-like items for people in need.
The lawyer is part of Classon Community Fridge, an organization that works with local businesses to redistribute food to neighborhoods so it doesn’t go to waste.
But by the end of February, Rao claims her once “perfectly delicious” bagels began to contain inedible debris, forcing her to abandon her nightly foraging routine.
“I realized it would ruin the bagel,” he said. “It was double bagged and the day’s worth of oatmeal was poured into it. Sometimes it smelled of chemicals and was unusable.”
Terry Chao, 34, another member of the community group, said the last time she inspected the Bagel Pub’s trash two weeks ago, the bagels were “contaminated” with the smell of “lemon Lysol or Clorox” and damp. They claim it was topped with oatmeal.
When The Post visited the eatery after it closed Thursday, a reporter found cinnamon bagels mixed in with what appeared to be chicken wing bones in the trash.
Rao said providing bagels to hungry people was the “best part” of the day.
But Chris Kotsis, manager of the Bagel Pub front store, which opened in 2015, said the old dough products were “garbage” and that action had to be taken after complaints that Rao’s abuse was causing chaos. He argued that it should not have happened.
“You’re giving people garbage,” Kostis told the Post. “We tried to work with him, but he insisted on the free bagels. We’re not going to just give them to him. We’re not going to ask him what he’s doing with them. Or I don’t know if they sell them.”
Rao admitted that he had never entered into an agreement with Kochis until he started diving into bagel store dumpsters.
However, he reportedly had a so-called gentlemen’s agreement with the sanitation workers, who told him to protect the bagels from contamination by putting them in separate bags when they noticed him rummaging through the garbage. I think it has become.
Mr. Rao put six bagels back into plastic bags and placed them on benches in the park in front of his store, at bus stops and other nearby locations, and delivered them to people in need.
On a busy weekend, he said he gets 35 sleeves’ worth of bagels, which he estimated would be around 200 bagels.
Rao admitted that leaving them alone in front of the store was a mistake.
That pissed off the bagel pub.
Kostis claims that Rao’s shady activities have resulted in complaints from neighbors and local businesses about plastic sleeves that were found torn and scattered on nearby streets.
He said the Bagel Pub received three tickets from the Sanitation Department for loose bagels appearing in front of the store and torn bags littering the block.
“It looks terrible. There are torn bags everywhere. I don’t want that in front of my store,” he said.
Kostis noted that he offered Rao the chance to buy bagels for half price (bagels without toppings are $2) to redistribute at the end of the day, but the good Samaritan was not interested.
He also said he was displeased by the apparent backroom deals between Mr. Rao and store employees, and argued that Mr. Rao should have approached him directly about the unsold items. He learned about the stunt several months ago and told his employees not to participate.
Kostis said he had surveillance footage of Rao scavenging and “leaving all the trash outside,” which Rao denies.
“If someone comes up to us at the end of the day and we have a normal conversation and say, ‘I need this bagel because I’m feeding the homeless,’ that’s a different story. ” Kostis said.
“But if you’re just taking it out of the garbage, you don’t know if you’re selling it or what you’re doing with it,” he added. “We can’t just take out our trash and expect our employees to clean up after themselves.”
Kostis said he is considering filing a restraining order against Rao. He also claims he was forced to “fire” one of his employees who assisted Mr. Rao in the surgery.
Rao remains hopeful that an agreement can be reached with Bagel Pub.
“I’m definitely going to settle with Bagel Pub,” he said. “But unless Chris is upholding the falsehood that I had them give me three subpoenas or that I had to fire an employee for helping me. That’s obviously false.”
Earlier this month, Rao struck a deal with Lula Bagel, a quaint shop on Nostrand Avenue about a half-mile from Bagel Pub, to donate excess bagels to local refrigerators.
“I’m not a Marxist. They can do what they want,” Rao said of the bagel pub. “But that aside, if you have waste or trash, don’t just throw it away.”
