Posted by admin on July 29, 2010 under New Product Showcase | 
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Kosher consumers and anyone interested in healthier alternatives to sugary and corn syrup-filled alcoholic beverages can now sample Steve’s Sugarfree Margarita, a Ready-To-Drink (RTD) margarita which contains only 12% alcohol so it can sell in establishments with only a beer and wine license. It is certified kosher by the OK. Most RTD cocktails are very sugary, and people’s increasing concern about health and nutrition means they’re looking for alternative beverages that deliver the same flavor but with fewer additives and preservatives. Sweetened with sucralose and erythritol, this new sugar free margarita in Steve’s line of RTD cocktails is a breakthrough for cocktail consumers, especially those who keep kosher. For more information, see Steve’s Margarita or call (305) 652-2540.
Posted by admin on July 28, 2010 under Sixth Sense |
By Menachem Lubinsky
The Dagim Company, manufacturers of many fish products, recently contributed a significant amount of product to Masbia, a network of kosher soup kitchens founded by Alexander Rappaport and supported by the Metropolitan Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty. Just before Passover, KJ Poultry delivered truckloads of kosher poultry products to various Jewish neighborhoods with large numbers of poor. Sources tell me that many kosher food manufacturers routinely donate products to Masbia, Met Council and other food pantries that help needy Jews with kosher products. They also say that they could use many other products that they are forced to purchase and which puts a strain on their limited budget.
The re-emergence of the soup kitchen is an ominous sign that Jewish poverty has not been relegated to the past. In fact, Met Council says that well over 150,000 Jews live below the federal definition of poverty. While the soup kitchens of another era, in the ‘30’s and ‘50’s, served mainly elderly Jews, today the clients are young families, many victimized by the relentless recession. Some of the “clients” of Masbia are people who at one time were amongst the Middle Class, but as a result of an illness, death, or job loss suddenly find themselves in need of a hot meal in one of the Masbia soup kitchens throughout the city. For those companies that have stepped up to the plate thank you and for those waiting on the on-deck circle the community will no doubt thank you as well.
Posted by admin on July 27, 2010 under Kashrus Organization |
New York…With the addition of hundreds of new kosher products comes a drawback that has many kashrus sources and ordinary consumers on edge. It seems that as the number of products increase so do the number of alerts that appear in Anglo Jewish newspapers, kosher certification agency newsletters, and the blogs that routinely cover such alerts. The alerts typically involve an unauthorized usage of a kosher symbol as was the case with Snapple recently when its certifier, OK Kosher Certification, alerted customers that the 24 pack – 20 oz plastic bottles of Snapple had been incorrectly labeled OK Pareve. It appeared that while most of the flavors were kosher, the Fruit Punch was not. Another advisory referred to JELL-O Strawberry Cheesecake Snacks produced by Kraft Foods which the OK does not certify because it contains gelatin. The issues with kosher certification are as widespread with larger manufacturers as they are with smaller ones.
Also of concern is changed status of restaurants and retail establishments. In Chicago, the cRc had to warn customers that it no longer certified many Red Mango stores around the country. Changes in certification at many eating establishments routinely occur but in many cases the stores are left without certification. Kashrus agencies say they are noticing an increased volume of calls to their consumer hotlines. One rabbi told Kosher Today that the calls begin the minute that there “is any kind of buzz about the kashrus status of a product or eating establishment.”
Posted by admin on July 26, 2010 under Kosher Alcohol |
New York…Vodka brands from around the world are obtaining kosher certification as are other alcohol beverages. Kosher wine and spirit experts say that there has been a significant increase in demand of alcohol beverages, particularly by younger kosher consumers. The Orthodox Union recently announced that the coveted Glenmorangie of Scotland had received its kosher certification. More recently it added its certification to varieties of single malt whisky manufactured by Tomintoul Distillery. Me Oko, a line of American made Vodka was recently certified by Khal Adas Jeshurun, based in Washington Heights in New York. Kosher wine experts say that it has become fashionable amongst many young Orthodox Jews to consume the alcohol products at weekly Kiddush sessions in the synagogue, at weddings and at social gatherings. One expert said that many are “copying practices at a Farbrengen, the gatherings made famous by the Lubavitch movement at which Chasidim find spiritual satisfaction in a gathering laced with stories of the late Rebbe, singing and dancing, and consuming vodka. He noted that the Vodka was as much a part of the latest trend as hanging out at a high-end kosher restaurant on a Thursday night or eating Sushi. Not all Orthodox Jews are happy about this development as some rabbis have banned the alcohol from “Kiddush clubs” and other shul sponsored events. While the manufacturers have noticed an uptik in demand, alcohol consumption remains taboo in many quarters, but as one youth said: “Give me some good herring, a wholesome kichel and it is automatic that I wash it down with some Vodka.”
Posted by admin on July 25, 2010 under Kosher Companies |
New York…by Staff Reporters…When the temperature goes up, so do the number of new product launches that are frozen and kosher, with the objective always being to succeed year-round. One newcomer that has made a splash is the new kosher line of Chozen Ice Cream, recently profiled in the New York Times and stocked in stores like Pomegranate and Manhattan’s Westside Market. Created by the women in the Fisher family, the line uses innovative add-ins from the Jewish repertoire of favorite snacks – such as rugelach, matzah, and babka – in gourmet ice cream. Flavors include vanilla ice cream with chocolate and caramel coated matzah bits, and chocolate babka ice cream with babka chunks swirled throughout. In time for Rosh Hashanah, the company plans to introduce caramelized apple ice cream with honey chunks.
More sophisticated palettes may gravitate towards gelato, a frozen dessert similar to ice cream but with a lower fat ratio and lower sugar content. Gelato means frozen in Italian; the dessert originated in Italy. Aldo, a popular Israeli chain of gelato shops, opened in several locations last summer in the US – including famous tourist attraction Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and in the Upper West Side– under the name Screme. The gelato, which has 5% butterfat (typical ice creams contain up to 14%) comes in many classic and innovative flavors, including cornbread, Snickers, biscotti, cinnamon cookie dough, and chocolate brownie whiskey. With chic menu items comes chic prices – a single scoop of the gelato is $5. The gelato can be ordered under a freshly-made waffle as well. In Boca Raton, The Gelato Shoppe offers delicious kosher gelato certified by the Orthodox Rabbinic Board of Hollywood. The shop offers dairy, cholov yisrael, or pareve frozen desserts in such flavors as Belgian dark chocolate, tiramisu, panna cotta, Italian wedding cake, banana cream pie, persimmon, and basil.
The Talenti brand of gelato was also recently certified kosher by the Orthodox Union. The gourmet line has sumptuous flavors like caramel cookie crunch, white chocolate raspberry, Caribbean coconut, and Sicilian pistachio. The Talenti line can be ordered online icecreamsource.com or purchased at Whole Foods. Gelati-Da is another line of gourmet gelatos, kosher certified by the cRc, that are found sporadically in retail stores throughout the U.S. Your best bet is to order it online, also at icecreamsource.com. Flavors include vanilla marsala, coffee fudge latte, and amaretto chocolate. Israel-based company G. Willie-Food International Ltd. is introducing a brand-new line of gelato manufactured in Italy, which will begin selling this month. For those who are strictly watching their waistlines and shun even the lower-fat gelato, there are new “diet” ice creams that satisfy the palette with much fewer calories. Strauss, the Israeli ice cream company, has a new line of low-calorie vanilla, coffee, chocolate and cherry ice cream bars and sandwiches, none exceeding more than 55 calories. And Klein’s line of Healthy Habits Dixie cups, bars, and push pops and Snapple Ices offers a variety of flavors and textures for less than 100 calories. As kosher continues to become synonymous with high-quality and gourmet, we can expect even more lines of inventive and delicious frozen desserts in summers to come.
Posted by admin on July 23, 2010 under Kosher |
New York…by Tova Ross, Feature Editor…As people around the globe continue to move towards a healthier diet, many vegetarian, vegan, and health-oriented food companies are also increasingly obtaining kosher certification. The reason is that many manufacturers believe that people buy kosher foods not only for religious reasons, but with the belief that kosher is synonymous with higher-quality. A few months ago, the New York Times reported that in today’s world, with worries over food contamination and a heightened awareness of food allergies and purity of ingredients, “kosher equals pure” for many people – Jewish or not. And Mintel, a consumer goods research company, found that only 15 percent of those who purchase kosher products regularly do so for religious reasons.
The Redwood Wholefood Company, the British ethical and vegan food company owned by Heather Mills, was just awarded kosher certification for its broad range of natural, plant-based foods, including dairy-free cheeses and similar-tasting alternatives to meat in beef, turkey and chicken flavors. The kosherization process took almost a full year to complete, and the supervisor is the Manchester Beth Din. Said Heather Mills. “Achieving kosher certification is an endorsement of the care and attention we give to the sourcing of ingredients and to the manufacturing of our products.” The company’s products are sold under the VBites label in the United States.
Daiya Foods, non-dairy (pareve) products that are similar to dairy cheese in taste and texture, have recently received OU kosher certification. In addition to being dairy-free, Daiya foods are free of gluten, soy, eggs, wheat, barley, whey, peanuts, and tree nuts. Mara Friedman, editor-in-chief of The Jew and the Carrot, a blog about Jewish thought and food tradition along with contemporary issues like sustainability, organic eating, and nutrition, stated, “Vegetarians navigating a world of confusing food labels know that innocent sounding ingredients in conventional products are often animal-derived. A kosher label on food is one of the most trustworthy guarantees that certain animal products will not be present.”
Posted by admin on July 21, 2010 under Kosher Market |
By Menachem Lubinsky
New York…Large food manufacturers largely ignore kosher customers while retailers are paying more attention to their kosher base. Few of the large manufacturers advertise in Jewish weeklies and periodicals, but retailers do flag kosher consumers, particularly on the eve of Jewish holidays. Recent studies show that the manufacturers are also lax when it comes to wooing Muslim Americans. But there is evidence that national marketers are paying some lip service to the estimated 6 million Muslims in the US by advertising on Muslim Web sites. The same cannot be said for kosher consumers. “Best Buy even included the phrase ‘Happy Eid’ in a holiday flyer that also mentioned Christmas and Hanukkah last year,” S. Saad Ahmed, director of sales and strategy for the Los Angeles-based Muslim Ad Network, tells Marketing Daily, “which was definitely a kind of olive branch to Muslim Americans.” “Companies like Staples and HSBC are also reaching out to this market, which is worth about $200 billion,” Lisa Mabe, principal of Hewar Social Communications, a digital marketing agency in Washington D.C., tells Marketing Daily. Based on studies by LUBICOM Marketing Consulting and the Mintel Organization, an estimated 12 million Americans buy kosher food products on a fairly regular basis, which does not include ordinary Americans that buy some of the $250 billion in food products that are kosher certified. Marketers have long agreed that the manufacturers may be loosing out on an opportunity to woo more kosher consumers to their brands by ignoring the kosher world. It appears that while the manufacturers may be asleep at the wheel, retailers are increasingly recognizing the opportunities of marketing to kosher consumers, particularly before major Jewish holidays.
Articles are written by Menachem Lubinsky and his international network of correspondents to deliver the latest products and trends in the Kosher market.
Posted by admin on July 19, 2010 under Kosher Stores |
New York…A Flatbush mother of five says that she shops in at least four stores each week. She says that she changed her shopping habits two years ago from shopping everything she needed in one store. In interviews with shoppers and retailers, it is becoming apparent that many kosher shoppers are returning to the days of dividing their shopping chores, only this time it is not necessarily the baker and the butcher but the Club store and large independent kosher stores that offer special discounts on specific items. Even shoppers who have made the move to such high end stores as Pomegranate are also shopping other stores. The recession has changed the shopping patterns of shoppers everywhere. A joint study released by Deloitte and Harrison Group found that 92% of people surveyed have changed their grocery shopping behavior in the last two years. In particular, 89% said they have become more resourceful while 84% say they are more precise when they shop.
Some kosher shoppers say that they are being more resourceful in planning their shopping, buying many items in bulk at a Club store and taking advantage of specials at such discount stores as the Kollel store. The Club stores have added many kosher products in the past two years. One retailer told Kosher Today that the new shopping habits of kosher consumers has “created a price war where shoppers are actually comparing prices between stores.” He said that he knows that one of his shoppers has her husband shop at two different stores while she buys specific discounted items at his store. While the retailer hoped that these new shopping trends were recession related, he in the end was not so sure. For manufacturers, the most disturbing aspect of new shopper surveys is that American shoppers are for the first time preferring generic items that are cheaper rather than brands.
Articles are written by Menachem Lubinsky and his international network of correspondents to deliver the latest products and trends in the Kosher market.
Posted by admin on July 18, 2010 under Market Share, Out of the Box |
By Menachem Lubinsky
Marketers use the term winning when it comes to market share as if it were some kind of competition like sports. By the same token, there is the possibility of “loosing” market share which is often as devastating as losing a major competitive event. Market share is that significant!
Kellogg’s recently recalled some 28 million boxes of cereal because of an odor in its packaging. Marketing analysts were immediately assessing whether the recall would affect its market share, concluding that its world wide positioning would help carry the icon brand beyond the recall without any loss in market share.
Cereals is one of those categories where market share was always a key factor in the fight for the coveted # 1 position with such competitors as Post and General Mills. Market share directly relates to the positioning of a brand. Having the largest market share means leadership. It is the best evidence that a product is the leader in its category, which in turn can affect many other important variables: stock prices, profits, sales, valuation, and future mergers and acquisitions.
Market share in many companies is like winning a presidential election. The country is divided into regions and staff working for a candidate in each region is expected to win the lion’s share of votes (market share). The whole issue of market share for large businesses is in a way much like the electoral college in a presidential bid. The companies make a concerted effort to be the leader in the large cities because cumulatively they add up to the largest concentrations of consumers. How companies fare in large markets is also important in the overall positioning of a company.
The battle for having leading market share occurs daily in communications, food, technology, and in so many other categories. When a company actually “wins” market share, it usually means that it has successfully deposed a competitor. At that point a key imperative is to stay in the leadership position. For the dethroned entity, it becomes a challenge to recapture its former position. This was always the case not only with the cereals companies, but with the highly heralded Coke -Pepsi wars and also with the automobile manufacturers. At first it was the US manufacturers fighting for market share amongst themselves and then it was the Europeans who muscled their way into the leadership position in the US.
The US auto manufacturers are one of the bright stories to emerge from the recent recession. On the brink of bankruptcy and bailed out by Uncle Sam, they are in the throes of an unprecedented comeback. While leader Toyota was embroiled in a myriad of quality issues, the US manufacturers actually are producing a much better product and it is not going unnoticed. It will be awhile until they are once again locked in a battle for the leadership in market share with the Europeans, but many observers say that it is in sight.
While market share is most often associated with major brands, marketers say that it can be applied to almost any business situation, even for the local cleaners or restaurant. The upshot is that having the largest market share most often spells being the leader.
Being the leader with significant market shared directly relates to many characteristics of the brand, first and foremost is quality. When the majority of people in a given market prefer a certain brand, they are reaffirming that they consider the product the best value for their money. They are attesting to the fact that the product has an edge over competitors and that is worth its weight in gold.
But not always is winning market share synonymous with being number one. Cutting into the market share of a leader is considered to be a major coup for brands trying to compete in a given category. Gaining percentage points of share from a leader is considered to be a formidable achievement for a product or brand.
Many readers will remember when Avis and Hertz were vying for market share. While Hertz claimed that it was the leader, Avis came up with a slogan “We Try Harder.” In essence Avis was conceding the Number One slot but pointing out its formidable position in market share. Being second in market share or even third may for some brands be as important as it is for some brands to be the leader. Marketers say that Avis was actually hoping that its honest We Try Harder would catapult them to Number One.
I recently read about a number of power drink companies that are cutting into market share of the large beverage companies in an age when the power drinks are preferred by many young customers. The marketing director of one of the brands wrote: “Every customer that we wean off Coke and Pepsi is a major shift in market share. The battle for market share is with every purchase.”
The quest for market share is so vital in the marketing arena that almost every brand ultimately defines its success or failure by looking at its market share. A shift of even a percentage point or two can have major implications for the bottom line of a brand.
Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Menachem Lubinsky has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.
The name, “Out of the Box” is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.
Posted by Menachem Lubinsky on July 16, 2010 under New Product Showcase |
Clearwater, FL… Monin Gourmet Flavorings, the world’s leading provider of premium syrups and flavoring products, recently added Monin Cucumber Syrup to its family of syrups. With a true essence and cooling effect of fresh cucumber, Monin Cucumber Syrup is a refreshing flavor accent for specialty teas, lemonades and cocktails and Monin Cucumber Syrup is made with natural cucumber flavor and pure cane sugar to deliver a highly fragrant aroma with a lightly sweet, vegetable cucumber taste in a highly-concentrated, easy to use format. New Monin Cucumber Syrup is kosher certified under the Kosher Supervision of America (KSA). It is also wheat gluten free, Vegan, GMO free and dairy free. Monin Cumber Syrup is available in 1 Liter plastic bottles packaged 4 bottles per case and an 18 month shelf life. Monin also offers over 200 specialty syrups, sauces and purées designed to add flavor and profit to specialty beverages. For more information call 800-966-5225 or visit
Monin.
