Call Your Mother’s Second Shop for Hit Bagels Opens During the Pandemic | Eater DC

"Known for lines that used to curve around its block on Lamont Street NW and named one of Eater’s 16 Best New Restaurants in America in 2019, Call Your Mother is moving ahead with a planned spring expansion during the pandemic: it is accepting preorders for its hugely popular wood-fired bagels and tomorrow customers can pick up assorted bagels, schmears, lox, or chocolate chunk cookies at a new Capitol Hill outpost that replaces Spring Mill Bread Co. For at least the first week the Southeast location will take orders a day ahead to manage output, open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., offer a limited online menu, send a text when orders are ready, have customers give their name from across a door and pick up contactless from a table, and mark waiting areas at a responsible distance with chalk. The original Park View shop closed in mid-March to protect employees, packaged to-go orders to donate to hospital workers (which gave the team confidence it could operate safely), and reopened for takeout March 30. Management polled workers and asked anyone who takes public transit or lives with high-risk people to sit out; the company has been operating with about 20 percent of its normal staff and says the Capitol Hill expansion will allow some people to return to work. The owners have pledged to keep all employees on the payroll through the public health crisis and launched a fundraiser that raised nearly $75,000, including a $4,000 pizza class for 18 people, a few $2,000 passes to cut the line for a year, and a $1,500 opportunity to name and create a bagel." - Gabe Hiatt