09/23/2026
I walked into work this morning and Henis (our delivery driver) says to Charlie (the owner) “today’s Ryan’s last day, are we doing anything special?” and Charlie says “oh yeah! HEY RYAN! Will you make a post on Instagram about how it’s your last day here and how we’ll miss you and all that?” and I was like “😅😬 uhhhhh…. Sure?” - then Jon comes into work and I stop him before he does anything and say “hey Jon I need you to take a photo of me real quick for an Instagram post” and Jon takes this photo and says to Charlie “are you having Ryan make an Instagram post about their last day here?” and Charlie just laughs, sees me sitting in front of this collage I made during the 4 months our Phoenix shop was closed using the giant lusterkaboom coloring pages we had our customers draw, tag and color for the 6 months prior to the 🔥 that happened in April - and is like “oh your posing in front of that? That’s a good idea, make sure you make the post sound good, like we wrote it” and I nod my head and am like “uhhhh… sure?!”
Anyway, working at Bagelfelds has been awesome. I was a fan of the business before I started working here back in July, 2023 after bonappetitmag wrote in an article “(Bagelfelds) have the best bagels outside of New York” - I was visiting family in Los Angeles when I saw this article and was like “oh dang, this is going to make my favorite secret bagel shop crazy busy” - I reach out in an email saying “hey, you know me, I’m a regular, my work background is 20 years in service industry, 5 years working at Square a degree in music business and I am going to school for Human Resources. Let me know how I can help”
Charlie replies “come in as soon as you can” - so I do - he talks at me for like 2 hours about all the s**t wrong with the business and says “so do you want to work here?” I replied “what’s the job?” He says “I don’t know, I just need help” and I say “alright.”
And the rest is history. I am moving to Los Angeles in 6 days to be closer to my family out there and I’m real excited about that, but I am really going to miss this place and the people that work here…. Customers are alright too. 😘
❤️-Ryan