ERVING — For hundreds of residents, Jodi Wozniak’s Turners Falls home has been the place to go to get tasty bagels. From this success, though, has risen a need for something more.

Bagels N’ More, a bakery founded by Wozniak and her mother, Robyn Polley, in November 2021, will open its brick-and-mortar storefront this month at the former Crooked Tap Café in Erving. The shop will be open Wednesday through Sunday from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The duo started the business after the April 2021 closure of Montague’s Farren Care Center, where they both worked, Wozniak said. Their humble home bakery flew “under the radar,” she said, selling goods by order only and growing primarily through word of mouth. They eventually amassed more than 600 likes and 700 followers on Facebook, which prompted them to contemplate how to best appease public demand.

“I think it’s kind of tough to order food out of people’s homes,” Wozniak noted.

When the former Crooked Tap Café building at 7 West Main St. in Erving became available, Wozniak and Polley jumped on the opportunity. The location, Wozniak said, was put up for sale by café owners Michael Driscoll and Simone Cristofori and had laid vacant since the café closed at the beginning of the pandemic. At this building, which they purchased for $380,000, Wozniak and her mother saw not only a prime high-traffic location along Route 2, but a surrounding populace hungry for a livelier downtown.

“They’re a growing community, from what we’ve been told,” Wozniak said. “I think the residents are excited to have another additional place to go in town.”

Bagels N’ More will mostly feature the same goodies that have kept bellies full since 2021. As its name suggests, bagels will be the business’ signature menu item. Wozniak said the shop makes the dough in house before letting it rise, forming the bagels by hand, boiling and baking them.

Other offerings will include whoopie pies, muffins, scones, pies, brownies, cookies and breakfast sandwiches. Eventually, they expect to make lunch sandwiches, she added.

“We’ll just add more if and when we’re able to and we’ll see how it goes,” she said.

As the shop grows, so will its staff, Wozniak hopes. For now, though, Bagels N’ More is a two-woman operation.

Wozniak said the shop is tentatively slated to open on Wednesday, depending on Selectboard approval.

Reach Julian Mendoza at 413-930-4231 or jmendoza@recorder.com.

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