Kosher Community Adapts to Vacationing and Gift-Giving Customers

Posted by Menachem Lubinsky on July 12, 2010 under Kosher Companies | View Comments

Liberty NY…by Staff Reporters…There was a time when the kosher community simply accepted the reality that some 300,000 New Yorkers leave the city for two months, which essentially meant also accepting the fact that they were involved in a 10-month business. This year, many kosher retailers have simply followed their customers. Kold Kuts, the Brooklyn neighborhood establishment serving burgers, deli, hot dogs, and popular Shabbos dishes like cholent and kugel, opened a satellite in South Fallsburg, NY. Another Brooklyn mainstay, Jerusalem II Pizza, has undergone a complete renovation and is open under new management this summer. The store is located on Main Street in Woodbourne, and has soup, sushi, salads, a pasta bar, and ice cream on the menu. Pomegranate, one of Brooklyn’s finest purveyors of take-home foods, has many of their prepared line of dishes available in three locations upstate: Landau’s in South Fallsburg, Crunchies, in Center 1 in Woodridge, and Dougie’s, in Woodbourne. Some New York food establishments have turned their attention to kosher camp “care packages.” Many camp care package proprietors operate year-round, sending gift baskets for holidays or for the college student who dorm far from home. All agree that their sales in the summer, traditionally the slowest time for sending gift baskets due to the lack of holidays, are boosted by the camp care package component to their businesses.

Jane Mortiz, owner of the Westport, Connecticut-based Challah Connection and The Kosher Gift Box, two online companies that deal with kosher food gift packages, commented, “Sending food care packages are the parents’ way of reaching out to their children in camp with something delicious.” Though Mortiz said the majority of her business comes from holiday gift baskets during the year or college gift baskets, the camp care package part of the business, which she began five years ago, is lucrative enough that she keeps it going. “I have a lot of grandparents who purchase the care packages,” she said. Many who patronize her business are return customers year after year, she also noted. Challah is the biggest-selling camp care package item, she said, as parents often want to acknowledge Shabbos to their campers away from home. “Many of our customers are secular or not even Jewish,” said Mortiz, “and the ones who most often get traditional items like challah or babka for their children.” Oh, Nuts, one of Brooklyn’s finest candy and sweets shops, does a brisk business in care packages during the summer season, “enough to keep our business humming during July and August,” said Ari Tahover, a spokesperson in their marketing department. Oh, Nuts offers over twenty-five different varieties of camp care packages and free shipping on these camp baskets. Tahover said they ship a couple hundred per week to camps primarily in upstate New York. Eleanor Newman of The Chocolate Emporium said much of her camp care package business is generated by virtue of being located near Camp Stone in Pennsylvania. The Challah Connection offers several “Healthy Munch” boxes that include chocolate-covered figs; trail mix; crackers with peanut butter spread; and oatmeal packets. Karen Chazan of KosherCarePackages.com said her company also offers a “No Junk in the Bunk” version of their camp care packages, all big enough to feed a bunk size of twelve campers. Still, more popular with kids are their OK-certified freshly baked cookies and brownies and blondies.