NYC bagel shop boss and dumpster-diving attorney battle over leftovers for the needy: ‘These are perfectly good’

The bagels aren’t all that’s boiling in this Brooklyn neighborhood.

A local attorney is accusing the manager of a popular Crown Heights bagel joint of purposely sabotaging old bagels — including covering them in chemicals and food scraps — so that the dumpster-diving dogooder can’t donate the leftovers.

“These are perfectly good bagels from there,” Ted Rao, 47, a social security and disabilities lawyer, told The Post recently.

“They were baked in the morning — they shouldn’t be thrown out.”

Rao became somewhat of a neighborhood celebrity on Franklin Avenue six months ago when he started digging in the garbage of local chain Bagel Pub’s outpost there and re-bagging the doughy goods  for those in need.

The attorney belongs to the Classon Community Fridge, a group that works with local businesses to redistribute food around the neighborhood so that it doesn’t go to waste.

But by the end of February, Rao claims he was forced to stop his evening foraging routine because the once “perfectly good” bagels started getting mixed in with inedible scraps.

“I noticed that the bagels would be ruined,” he said. “They would be double bagged with the day’s crockpot of oatmeal poured in there. Sometimes there was a chemical smell and they were just unusable.”

Another member of the community group, Terry Chao, 34, claims that when she last inspected Bagel Pub’s garbage two weeks ago, the bagels were “contaminated” with a “lemon Lysol or Clorox” smell and topped with moist oatmeal.

When The Post visited the eatery after closing Thursday, a reporter found cinnamon bagels mixed together in the garbage with what looked like a chicken wing bone.

Being able to put the bagels out for hungry people was the “best part” of his day, Rao said.

But Chris Kotsis, manager of the Bagel Pub outpost, which opened in 2015, maintained that the old dough goods were “garbage” — and that he had to take action after getting complaints that Rao’s exploits were causing a mess.

“You’re feeding people garbage,” Kostis told The Post. “We tried to work with him but he insists that he wants free bagels. We’re not gonna just give it to him. I don’t know what he’s doing with them or if he’s selling them.”

Rao admits that he never struck an agreement with Kotsis before he began diving in the bagel spot’s dumpster.

But he said he had a so-called gentlemen’s agreement with cleanup workers who noticed him digging through the trash and started placing the bagels in separate bags for him, keeping them safe, in his opinion, from being contaminated.

Rao would then re-bag the bagels by the half dozen in plastic sleeves, which he would then place on park benches in front of the store, or around the neighborhood, like at bus stops, for anyone in need.

On a busy weekend, he said he could get enough bagels to fit 35 sleeves, which he estimated to be around 200 bagels.

Leaving them in front of the store was a mistake, Rao acknowledged.

It left Bagel Pub boiling mad.

Kostis claims that Rao’s seedy operation sparked complaints from neighbors and local businesses about the plastic sleeves being found ripped and strewn on nearby streets.

He said that Bagel Pub received three tickets from the Department of Sanitation for loose bagels appearing in front of the store, and torn baggies littering the block.

“It looks terrible. It’s ripped bags all over the place. I don’t want that in front of my store,” he said.

Kostis noted that he offered Rao the chance to buy the bagels at half-price (a bagel with no toppings goes for $2) at the end of the day for redistribution, but the good Samaritan wasn’t interested.

He also said he was put off by the apparent side deal between Rao and store employees — arguing that Rao should have approached him directly about the leftover goods. He learned about the stunt a few months ago and told his workers to stop participating.

Kostis said he had surveillance footage of Rao digging through the trash and “leaving all the garbage” outside, which Rao denies.

“If somebody comes up to us at the end of the day and has a normal conversation with us and says, ‘Hey, I need these bagels because they’re feeding homeless people,’ that’s a different story,” Kostis said. 

“But when you’re just taking them out of the garbage, I don’t know if you’re selling them or what you’re doing with them,” he added. “You can’t just take s–t out of our garbage and expect my workers to clean up after.”

Kostis said he was considering getting a restraining order against Rao. He also claims that he was forced to “let go” of one of his workers who aided in Rao’s operation.

Rao remains hopeful that he and Bagel Pub can reach an agreement.

“I’m absolutely willing to make peace with the Bagel Pub,” he said. “But not if Chris stands by the falsehoods that I caused them to get three citations or that he had to fire an employee for helping me, which is patently false.”

Earlier this month, Rao brokered a deal with Lula Bagel, a quaint operation on Nostrand Avenue about a half mile away from Bagel Pub, to donate their leftover bagels to the community fridges.

“I’m not a Marxist – they can do what they want to do,” Rao said about Bagel Pub. “But short of that, if there is waste, if there is garbage, let’s not just throw it out.”