By Shira Kramer, Managing Editor
While Jewish people rave about the kosher food options in New York and Israel, there are people who keep kosher all over the world and who deserve restaurants that they can enjoy as well. Any restaurant faces challenges as the food business is hard to crack into and even harder to stay successful in. Maintaining a kosher restaurant takes those challenges to a whole new level.
The backbone of a kosher restaurant is its hecksher. This will determine both how people decide where to eat and what clientele will enter the restaurant. A good heckscher can make or break a restaurant and affect the level of business it brings in.
According to a Tablet Magazine article titled “Why Are So Many Kosher Restaurants So Bad,” the main problem kosher restaurant owners face is losing a significant percentage of business due to closure during the holidays. Consequently, if a kosher restaurant wants to open on Shabbat they forfeit the ability to hold a good hecksher. In fact, there are many rules restaurants must follow in order to keep a good hecksher.
In New York, specifically, customers have to make sure their restaurant of choice meets their kashrut expectations. For example, there are many restaurants in the city that are open on Shabbat and have a kosher hechsher. Additionally, some restaurants have multiple locations, however only a few are kosher. For chains who want to open kosher stores, it would be strategic to consider opening next to Jewish communities. Bravo Pizza, for example, is a popular restaurant amongst Stern students due to its close proximity to campus. However, consumers must be careful when looking up directions to Bravo Pizza because there is currently only one kosher location in the city.
While some of these religious requirements are predictable, such as having a mashgiach on site and playing only Jewish music, different communities hold different stringencies for their heckshers. In fact, some of these stringencies have nothing to do with food. For example, in 2011, Baltimore had a kosher Subway. The sandwich conglomerate partnered with a few Jewish communities around the country to provide kosher stores for these customers. For Subway, this affected their business as they had to close on Shabbat and serve a fully kosher menu. Obviously, these religious rules are not a norm for Subway, but they kept them anyway.
The one problem they didn’t expect to be hit with was their signature pairing. Families loved to go to Subway, eat a delicious sandwich and watch the game. Unfortunately, Jewish families of Baltimore weren’t interested in their young, impressionable children seeing commercials while watching football. Therefore, instead of compromising on their staple activity, Subway shut down and reopened an unkosher restaurant. The Jewish community of Baltimore not only lost a fun new kosher restaurant, but lost their money to a nonkosher restaurant.
Another factor that restaurants have to consider is the costs of their ingredients. Unlike nonkosher restaurants, kosher restaurants are limited in where their suppliers come from. For example, nonkosher restaurants have the ability to compare and control prices more than kosher restaurants can.
Additionally, kosher restaurants will often combine many different cuisine options in order to provide choices for their customers. This has proven to be bad for business because it leaves customers staring blankly at an eight-page menu. Customers are then left wondering what that particular restaurant specializes in. This is especially apparent when you think about how many kosher restaurants serve sushi, no matter the origin of their main cuisine.
Overall, it is no wonder why kosher restaurants are always opening quickly and closing just as fast. The amount of religious requirements that go into upholding a successful kosher business are impossible to follow.