ETEC honors Hot Bagel owners with ‘Muddy Bagel’ Award

Donna and Tom Sullivan, owners of Hot Bagel Company, were celebrated Friday morning with a Muddy Bagel Award for their community service for more than 25 years.

The Muddy Bagel Award is a spin-off of the Muddy Boot Award. That award from the East Tennessee Economic Council has been given for many years to people who “go above the call of duty to make the community a better place to live and work.”

The Sullivans are retiring. Hot Bagel has been the caterer for ETEC since 1995.

The Muddy Bagel Award was presented during a Zoom meeting of ETEC’s Board of Directors on Friday morning.

Donna and Tom started the Hot Bagel Company in 1994. It closes Saturday, May 30, without the large celebration they planned prior to the COVID-19 virus. However, they are planning to serve treats to celebrate from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., a press release said.

Tom Sullivan is the baker, up at impossibly early hours daily, and he dreams up all sorts of delicious concoctions like a giant “Gator” bagel on the Friday before a Tennessee versus Florida game or a skeleton bagel on the Friday before Halloween, the press release said. Donna Sullivan is always out in the community, raising funds to fight Lupus, catering, and serving breakfast to rowers from all over the United States. She sometimes seems like a whirling dervish, always on the go, the press release said.

“I am probably the only person that can say that I’ve had the most perfect job and had a blast, every day,” Donna said.

Donna and Tom were engineers working on the reservation when they decided to start their restaurant adventure. Tom loves to bake pastries. He even went to France to learn his art. 

“Hot Bagel has been ETEC’s caterer for so long I can’t remember who it was before, and at a price that hasn’t changed in 25 1/2 years,” said ETEC’s president Jim Campbell. “She likes what we do, and if we stray from her Dad, banker Don Maxwell’s Oak Ridge values, she lets us know.”

When the business deal to sell the company fell through, they decided to donate their equipment to the Pellissippi State Community College’s Culinary School. The Culinary Arts Program at Pellissippi State has agreed to provide food for the Butterflies for Hope bike ride post-event feast in 2021, an event organized by Hot Bagel for a cause near to the Sullivan’s heart, raising funds for the Lupus Foundation, the press release said.

Donna says these last few weeks have been busy. They are shipping bagels all over the country. They, and their food, will be missed. 

“It is appropriate to honor Donna and Tom by way of this one-of-a-kind Muddy Bagel Award,” Campbell said. “They’ve been with us in the room each Friday by way of their bagels. It’s always important to celebrate the people that go above and beyond to enrich their community.”