In a city known for its bagels, Moonrise Bagels Co-Founder Ali Chetkof insists, “You’ve never had a bagel like this before.”
The peculiar bagel shop is going viral for selling stuffed bagels with fillings such as Buffalo Chicken, Pastrami Reuben and even a Bacon, Egg and Cheese.
Moonrise Bagels opened its first New York City location in the West Village, located at 58 W 8th St, on Dec. 5, 2025. Since opening, Moonrise Bagels has been a major success, seeing lines out the door even two months after its grand opening.
Chetkof, and her husband, Jeremy Rhodes, first thought of the baffling idea to stuff a bagel while spending New Year’s Eve 2020 with their family. Rhodes was preparing pizza for the family and ended up making too much tomato sauce.
Instead of letting the sauce go to waste, Rhodes stuffed it, along with pizza toppings, into the bagel dough he had resting for breakfast. Soon after, the treats were devoured.
“The first ones didn’t quite work, but the flavors were amazing,” Rhodes said.
As his mother ran a catering service in Hoboken, NJ, Rhodes was used to having a home-cooked meal on the table while growing up. It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that he himself seriously got into baking.
“I was getting a little restless right before the pandemic, and was looking for a fun little hobby,” Rhodes said. “I toyed around with a couple of things, and then my brain just aligned with baking, in a way.”
After about five months of experimenting with different bagel doughs, shapes and fillings, the stuffed bagels were made ready for the public. Rhodes and Chetkof ended up receiving an inquiry from someone asking if they could buy some of the stuffed bagels, which led the way for the couple to begin selling the unusually delicious product out of their apartment.
“We quickly outgrew that,” Chetkof said. “We couldn’t eat anything else because our fridge was filled with bagels…we started doing pop-ups at some local places in Woodstock [New York]…selling out all the time.”
When a nearby sandwich shop approached the couple with an offer to take over their lease, they realized a dream of having their own storefront.
“It was a yearly [lease] so we basically were like…we might as well give it a try,” Chetkof said. “We took out a bank loan. We painted the counter blue, and we started selling bagels. We had no idea what we were doing; we figured it out along the way.”
The first Moonrise Bagels location opened in December 2021 in Woodstock, NY, only about a year after Rhodes had first thought of the idea.
Their storefront became a major hit, and not too long after, they outgrew that space, too. In 2024, Moonrise Bagels expanded to their second location in Poughkeepsie, where they could also start running their own commissary kitchen.
“All [the products] get handmade upstate in our Poughkeepsie commissary kitchen, and then we drive it to our stores every evening, and it gets boiled and baked on site throughout the day,” Chetkof said.
Just a few months later, they opened their third location – a seasonal pop-up shop located inside a 100-square-foot space attached to a local bar in Kingston.
Finally, about a year later, Moonrise Bagels opened its doors in the West Village.
“We wanted to be in a city, and we happened to live near the bagel capital of the world,” Chetkof said. “New York City was the next obvious choice.”
The menu has seven permanent flavors, along with a range of additional rotating flavors. Currently, Moonrise Bagels has partnered with DoorDash for exclusive flavor drops.
“We love the way that this menu functions,” Rhodes said. “It’s pick your bagel, pick your topping, pick your dipping sauce, and you can have so many different combinations of what you’re getting…There are possibilities for everyone.”
All bagels are handmade from scratch, with vegetarian and vegan options also available.
“This really feels like the finalization of everything we’ve been working on for four years,” Chetkof said. “I idolize this space.”
Rhodes and Chetkofs’ stuffed bagels have created a new landscape for the bagel arena, challenging conventional bagel standards and proving that the food no longer has to be just defined as a common, household breakfast item.
“We have no plans of slowing down,” Chetkof said. “We just want to get our stuffed bagels in as many people’s hands as possible.”
For more information, visit moonrisebagels.com.
