Boichik Bagels seeks volunteer chickens to consume kosher Everything mush

Are you a chicken? Do you like free food? The famed Berkeley bagel shop wants you.

Calling all chickens: Berkeley’s Boichik Bagels is looking for hungry, well-behaved birds to consume cornmeal mush and leftover seeds from best-selling Everything bagels. Must have negative Avian flu test. Turkeys need not apply.

Bay Area tech firms may be slashing jobs, but the outlook for domesticated junglefowl work is promising despite the egg shortage. In a newsletter this week, the Bay Area’s beloved bagel entrepreneur Emily Winston asked customers to set aside the table scraps this week in consideration of her growing compost. She needs an army of Boichickens.

“What we clean out of the bagel kettle and trough every day is a mess of wet cooked cornmeal and seeds,” wrote Winston, who is opening her 18,000-square-foot West Berkeley bagel warehouse and cafe in February. “I think it could be great chicken feed.”

Not just any chicken feed. These are toppings of bagels deemed the best in the country, not just by us but by the all-knowing, cream cheese whisperers in New York City.

The seeds and onion bits get washed off cutting boards throughout the day, making a sort of Everything polenta when mixed with the cornmeal mush.

“It’s very fancy,” Winston says. Did she taste it? “I did and it was really wet. It has potential as food.”

Coffee shops give away grinds for your garden. Who’s thinking about the chickens? The Boichickens. Winston is.

“There’s some concern about the onion bits,” she says. “But I talked to some people and they said it was OK.”

Winston, who has shops in Berkeley and Palo Alto, with a Santa Clara location opening this year, says she has already gotten interest from chicken owners. But it is still just a pilot program, and in Berkeley only. Swing by 3170 College Avenue and ask for some. They may give you a whole bin.

“Pick up a bagel, (have your chicken) lay an egg and put it on,” she says.