For more than 16 years, David Aldrich has been providing assistance to young people in the community through his Grab the Torch project, focusing on values of leadership, ethics, purpose, and philanthropy.
Now, after being forced to change his approach as a result of the pandemic, he is passing the torch to bagel making.
After 18 months of research and studying the art of bagel-making, Grab the Bagel was born. 100% of its net operating profits go to Aldrich’s scholarship fund and licensing fees for kids to take Grab the Torch’s cloud-based curriculum.
His kitchen is currently set up in the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore with the mission of providing “life-changing experiences and opportunities to thousands of high-school students across the country.”
That includes students right here in town, where Aldrich brings in student interns to help roll bagels while also teaching Grab the Torch’s core values.
Before he began baking bagels, Aldrich’s first initiative involved 13 years of summer programs for groups of 30 to 35 girls at various campuses throughout the country. Unfortunately, like everything else at the time, the programs were halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020.
“My program was my mission and my purpose in life,” Aldrich said. “It was kind of a bummer.”
After months of isolation, Aldrich felt the same way many did back then.
“To maintain my sanity, I needed to do something,” he said.
So he took up baking, but started small with making cobblers anonymously for others. A group would come by Aldrich’s house and deliver the food to those in need.
Almost immediately, the popularity of his baked goods and acts of kindness rose, and one day, he decided to expand his menu to bagels. He began meticulously researching the baking process and chemistry behind making bagels. On New Year’s Day 2022, he made 25 bagel baskets that he gave out to community members.
The interest and demand for Aldrich’s bagels kept growing, and so did his ambitions.
“I thought maybe this is the time where I can start a social enterprise and make it so I can keep Grab the Torch alive,” Aldrich said.
Thus Grab the Bagel was launched, all in honor of Aldrich’s 105-year-old godmother, who taught him “the true meaning of volunteering, philanthropy, and unconditional love.”
What started out as a random act of kindness has turned into “Random Acts of Bagelness,” which Aldrich has trademarked and now uses as his motto as part of an initiative to spread kindness throughout the country.
Living by that motto, he has spread “bagelness” throughout the community, including bringing bagel trays to officers at the police station, serving up breakfast at a Marblehead Pickleball outing for more than 90 members, and even reaching across town lines to bring his product to officials at Swampscott Town Hall.
In a world that is filled with uncertainty, challenges, and often a lack of decency in the way people treat each other, Aldrich’s message is simple: Say thank you. That is why he now has the goal of getting bagel shops across the nation to participate in Random Acts of Bagelness.
“Nothing could be more appropriate, and more fitting, and more necessary of doing something good, than right now, in our country, and in our global community,” Aldrich said. “It’s about just saying thank you to people.”
