Boaz Rachamim loved his first\u00a0feta cheese. It was soft and crumbly, perfect for the popular Greek salad at Eisenbergs Sandwich Co., his kosher dairy restaurant. When the locally produced cheese lost its\u00a0hechsher,\u00a0its kosher certification, Rachamim switched to another brand. Then they lost their\u00a0hechsher\u00a0as well. Now, Rachamim tells me, \u201cwe\u2019re stuck using other feta that we think is not as good, and is also double or triple the price.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not like he can go to a supplier to choose another from a dozen feta-style cheeses \u2014 find a similar Greek or perhaps experiment with a grassy, creamy Bulgarian. It must be one of the options recognized by the Kashruth Council of Canada (COR), Eisenbergs\u2019 kosher certifier. Unable to find a satisfactory replacement via commercial distributors, Rachamim is stuck buying an expensive import from the supermarket, rendering the dish, one of his best sellers, unprofitable.<\/p>\n
As a result, Rachamim is exploring a menu change, a switch to another salad that may have better margins. For the swap to succeed, the new salad will also have to be flavourful, healthy, and colourful \u2014 he\u2019s thinking maybe a fattoush with pomegranate seeds and goat cheese, which he can get at a better price.<\/p>\n
Every restaurant in the world is struggling with the industry\u2019s three main types of overhead: labour costs; fixed costs (rent, utilities, insurance, etc.); and what\u2019s called the cost of goods sold (COGS) \u2014 the price of the raw materials, including not just ingredients but wine, packaging, and other consumable or disposable products. Historically, these have each been pegged at eating up 30 percent of a restaurant\u2019s revenue, leaving just 10 percent for profit. That model, if it was ever the norm, is now long gone: the average full-service restaurant sees profits of between three to five percent. Food inflation, though easing off its 2023 height, has sent COGS into the stratosphere. (The cost of filling a deep-fryer with oil, hardly an ingredient seen by diners as a luxury that justifies high prices, has jumped 55 percent in five years.) A mass exodus of employees, and the resulting competition for staff, has been not just a cost increase but a drain on time and resources for owners and managers, who are constantly seeking, interviewing, and training new people. And fixed costs in Toronto and Montreal, where the majority of Canada\u2019s Jewish population lives, are always climbing; every lease renewal threatens the bottom line.<\/p>\n
Running a kosher restaurant means facing all these same challenges, and then adding in several more variables. First, there\u2019s the matter of the COGS. Not all kosher foods are more expensive, but key ingredients like beef or cheese can be double or triple the price of their non-kosher equivalents. Obtaining kosher certification for the restaurant itself adds another layer of fees, as does the employment of a\u00a0mashgiach\u00a0who ensures a kitchen adheres to the standards of kashrut on an ongoing basis.<\/p>\n
Then there are the hours of operation: many kosher restaurants, which need to be closed by sundown on Fridays, don\u2019t open at all that day; some also don\u2019t open for dinner after sundown on Saturday. (For most establishments, opening the business for a half-day is more trouble than it is worth.) These are the busiest days for restaurants: even those that do open for Friday lunch or Saturday dinner are forgoing some of the most lucrative meal services of the week. \u201cThey\u2019re closed for 24 hours or longer every week, 52 days a year,\u201d says kosher restaurant maven Dani Klein, a marketer who has operated the website\u00a0YeahThatsKosher\u00a0for the last 17 years. \u201cAnd it doesn\u2019t include Passover, Shavuot, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot \u2014 that\u2019s five holidays with multiple days they\u2019re forced to close. And usually the day before those holidays, nobody\u2019s going out dining because they\u2019re at home preparing. That\u2019s a lot of days to not have revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally, there\u2019s the size of the market itself. Of the 15 million Jews in the world, just over 400,000 live in Canada. COR estimates that a fifth of those keep kosher at home. Nationally, that\u2019s a market of roughly 80,000 customers \u2014 small enough to constrain the range of kosher products and businesses that would be sustainable, even absent other factors.<\/p>\n
If following kosher dietary law is challenging, and the restaurant industry has notoriously thin profit margins, then making a dollar in the kosher restaurant game is practically a circus act \u2014 a financial and culinary tightrope walk where the rope is on fire and there is a bear behind you. Staying upright requires even more adaptability and attention to detail than regular restaurant ownership, since the bear has to be kosher and the rope has to be blessed by a rabbi.<\/p>\n
Blintzes or Pastrami?<\/p>\n
Barry Chaim has owned Edo, a Japanese restaurant in midtown Toronto, since 1986. It\u2019s a neighbourhood with a large Jewish clientele, and members of the community regularly asked him to open a kosher restaurant. He decided to look into it. Despite the required closures, he concluded, \u201cyou\u2019ll get the support on the other days to make up for the loss of that Friday night. Because in Jewish tradition, Friday night is not what it is in Western tradition.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Five years ago, the right opportunity came along. Scotiabank Arena, where Chaim has had an outpost of EDO since the venue opened in 1999, had terminated the contract of its kosher food vendor and asked him to take over the station. Very quickly, the business proved that overhead was a bigger concern than operating hours. \u201cThe real challenge is the cost of food,\u201d Chaim says. \u201cMeat is so expensive. How many [kosher] restaurants opened and closed within the last 30 year? If they\u2019re meat restaurants they don\u2019t last.\u201d<\/p>\n
All aspiring kosher restaurateurs face a basic question: Meat or dairy? The answer doesn\u2019t just affect their menus \u2014 it shapes their business models.<\/p>\n
Rachamim operates two locations of Eisenbergs: a dairy kitchen inside the Prosserman JCC and a meat location in the Schwartz\/Reisman Centre. He cites two elements as being central to understanding the meat versus dairy equation: the profit margins on ingredients and the range of services an establishment offers.<\/p>\n
On the first count, Rachamim says, \u201cdairy and pareve [are] where your margins are better.\u201d Simply put: because the baseline cost of the ingredients is lower, restaurateurs can mark them up more than they can meat items. Over the last 15 years, beef has become a luxury ingredient for everyone: the price climbed 75 percent from 2009 to 2024. Kosher beef is at least 50 percent more expensive than that. But while the cost of beef seemingly knows no upper limit, there\u2019s a hard cap on what guests will pay for it. As any restaurateur will tell you, they can charge only so much for a hamburger or a steak. \u201cOn the meat, unfortunately, you can\u2019t really mark up so much. Nobody\u2019s going to pay you $30 for a sandwich.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not unless you\u2019re an institution and tourism destination, like Katz\u2019s Delicatessen, which can get away with charging $28.95 (US) for a pastrami sandwich because people want to eat at the restaurant from\u00a0When Harry Met Sally.\u00a0At $19.95 (Canadian, equal to less than half what Katz\u2019s charges), Eisenbergs doesn\u2019t expect such revenue \u2014 but sandwiches are still important to the restaurant\u2019s operations. \u201cYou need those on the menu to draw attention, as your loss leaders,\u201d Rachamim says. \u201cLike Costco \u2014 they have hot dogs for $1.50, and [those] drive people in to buy other items.\u201d<\/p>\n
Profit margins aren\u2019t the only consideration. Another factor that plays a distinctive role in the kosher food ecosystem is catering, which is far more common that in the mainstream restaurant industry. Catering is more profitable than restaurant service, and it can provide steadier income through contracts (such as standing arrangements to cater meals for a JCC, school, or synagogue).<\/p>\n
This is helpful because margins tend to be higher on catering than restaurants. A caterer doesn\u2019t just sell the food, which has thin margins: they sell services, like wait staff, and access to supplies \u2014 every glass, plate, and utensil is rented to the client at a much more advantageous markup than a steak. Restaurants, of course, provide services (waiting on patrons at their tables or packaging up their takeout orders) and require supplies, but, because guests aren\u2019t charged for these separately, these costs get folded into the prices of menu items; there\u2019s only so much mark-up that restaurateurs can add to those. In catering, each of these other items is invoiced separately, on top of the food: businesses charge for the hourly wage of each employee and the rental of every piece of tableware, each of which can then be marked-up.<\/p>\n
Stamp of Approval<\/p>\n
Opening and maintaining a kosher commercial kitchen goes far beyond the ingredients and recipes you use. Kashrut isn\u2019t an honour system: it requires operating under the oversight of a certification organization \u2014 in Canada, that generally means COR (The Kashrut Council of Canada), MK (MK Kosher Global Certification Agency, n\u00e9e Montreal Kosher), or KSR (Kashrut Supervision du Rabbinat).<\/p>\n
Kitchens must be regularly scrutinized by a\u00a0mashgiach, an organizationally approved food inspector whose duties include lighting pilot flames (to make certain that an observant Jew is involved in the cooking), ensuring that fridges are locked (to guarantee that no one can tamper with the items in it, intentionally or accidentally), examining raw ingredients (produce must be washed to ensure it is free of bugs), and signing off on the\u00a0hechsherim\u00a0(the certification labels) on packaged products \u2014 not all of which are recognized by each certification body. Rates are different for every restaurant, but this supervision and approval costs thousands per year.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a system that can be hostile to those perceived as outsiders. In 2014, Alex Levy opened ELNA Bistro inside a medical centre in Montreal\u2019s C\u00f4te Saint- Luc. Levy is not observant, and his application for kosher certification was rejected by MK and KSR. He appealed KSR\u2019s decision, explaining that there was nothing in their rules prohibiting this: KSR had previously approved three other restaurants with similar ownership. Once Levy was approved by KSR, the first inspector was strict but respectful, taking the time to explain why a particular can of pumpkin couldn\u2019t be used even though it had US kosher certification. The business grew over the next few years until the supervisor was replaced by a less pleasant\u00a0mashgiach, who came into Levy\u2019s kitchen demanding access to books, cameras, and fridges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t even introduce himself as the new supervisor, and he was walking in my kitchen,\u201d says Levy. Asked why he was being treated with suspicion, the supervisor told him it was because Levy was not observant. On a second visit, things got more heated. \u201cHe points at the certificate and he snaps his fingers and says,\u00a0I remove this. You\u2019re a nobody. You will do as I say or you\u2019re not going to have the certificate.\u201d<\/p>\n
For its part, MK said it would approve Levy\u2019s restaurant at triple the rate he was paying KSR. Eventually they settled for the same fee, but without any transparency about rates and policies, the restaurateur was left feeling that the enforcement of kashrut was capricious. (MK did not respond to requests for comment.)<\/p>\n
Public health agencies, which also inspect restaurants, often hand out letter grades to inform the public about an establishment\u2019s status, with timelines for fixing minor rule-breaking, which is a restaurant\u2019s responsibility. Kosher certifiers are more interventionist and generally work with restaurants on compliance, helping the operator meet their standards. \u201cMost mistakes that happen are unintentional,\u201d says Richard Rabkin, managing director of COR, \u201cand can be corrected with better forethought and direction.\u201d But when there are serious, intentional violations \u2014 for example, sneaking purchases of non-kosher meat \u2014 agencies can revoke a restaurant\u2019s kosher certification. If a restaurant loses that, with it goes the trust of the kosher clientele. The only options then are transitioning to a being non-kosher restaurant or going out of business. There\u2019s no coming back.<\/p>\n
If monitoring for all this sounds labour intensive, that\u2019s because it is. Some Canadian organizations, including MK and KSR, assign the restaurant\u2019s\u00a0mashgiach. COR allows restaurateurs to select their own working\u00a0mashgiach\u00a0(who works directly in the kitchen and COR must then approve), with additional oversight provided by what\u2019s a called a \u201croute\u00a0mashgiach\u201d\u2014 a COR\u00a0mashgiach\u00a0who has several restaurants, generally clustered close together, which they simultaneously oversee \u2014 who visits multiple times a day. They, in turn, report to a senior\u00a0mashgiach\u00a0in the head office. In 2016, COR launched a\u00a0mashgiach\u00a0training course that includes food safety and knife handling education. That\u2019s a lot of labour and bureaucracy that the restaurateur is paying for through fees.<\/p>\n
A contemporary tech upgrade to these long-established practices: installing cameras in the kitchen. This allows kosher agencies to both bring down their own labour costs as well as collect documentation in case of infractions. Like all security measures, the cameras are a double-edged sword. Employees don\u2019t like it. But it helps ensure a kitchen\u2019s kosher status and may be used to settle a dispute with a\u00a0mashgiach,\u00a0which is in a restaurant\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n
The single greatest increased cost to a kosher restaurateur is the requirement of employing a\u00a0mashgiach, which becomes very pricy if that person only oversees kashrut and does not perform any other kitchen labour. \u201cI\u2019ve seen some [kitchens] where the only function and job for the\u00a0mashgiach\u00a0is the kosher supervision,\u201d Klein says. \u201cThey literally will not lift a finger and do anything else, where they technically could. And in those cases, they\u2019re a real financial strain on those businesses.\u201d This is, to be clear, not due to religious obligations. \u201cThere are plenty of other\u00a0mashgichim\u00a0who are very hands-on and are working as if they\u2019re a manager or a cook,\u201d explains Klein. \u201cThey\u2019re serving a dual purpose in the restaurant so they\u2019re not bloating the payroll.\u201d This, obviously, is a better situation for the restaurateur, but still an added cost: Klein says that someone in this role \u201cis still going to cost more than a typical restaurant worker.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the United States, smaller certification agencies like DC Kosher and Lighthouse Kosher are working to lower this financial barrier. Focused primarily on vegetarian and vegan restaurants whose ingredients require less oversight, DC Kosher provides an easier avenue for businesses that aren\u2019t aimed at a kosher audience but could easily reach them without too much additional effort. \u201cThat\u2019s a quality of food that I want to model for our community,\u201d says Rabbi Uri Topolosky, a member of DC Kosher\u2019s kashrut supervision board. \u201cI\u2019m motivated to help out a small business owner when I know it can be a fully kosher operation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The volunteer-based DC Kosher charges no fees. Though stressing that he does not oppose the work of the major certification organizations, Topolosky wants to provide another option in order to increase the availability and variety of kosher restaurants. \u201cFor some smaller operations, it\u2019s not tenable. They can\u2019t afford to drop another $2,000 to these agencies. It cuts too deeply into their bottom line.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Topolosky stands behind his Orthodox kosher standards, but he does operate differently than other Orthodox certifiers, relying on collaboration with restaurateurs \u2014 for example, working with them to standardize their vegeble-washing processes \u2014 and casual visits from community members rather than a clockwork inspection process. Topolosky doesn\u2019t feel the need for daily checks, and would rather practise this as a trust-based partnership than require constant oversight. \u201cThe reality,\u201d he says, \u201cis that we don\u2019t need what has become the standard in the kosher world. It\u2019s become a standard to require a kosher supervisor on site all the time. That has not been an easy option for many of these restaurants.\u201d<\/p>\n
A small market & small selection<\/p>\n
Some kosher restaurants say the lack of competition among suppliers \u2014 manufacturers and distributors of items like the feta Rachamim was looking for \u2014 is one of their biggest challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no competition in\u00a0kashrus\u00a0in Montreal, in terms of meat,\u201d says Steven Lapidus, a professor at Concordia University and an expert in Montreal\u2019s kosher scene. \u201cMost of the kosher beef manufacturers are all owned by the same company.\u201d Mehadrin (which alone distributes 75 percent of Canadian kosher beef) and Shefa effectively have a duopoly on the supply of kosher meat in this country. In addition to the high costs, kosher restaurateurs describe a lack of variety in the goods that are available, but with so few options they must choose from that limited selection and pay when prices rise, which is frequently. \u201cIt\u2019s debatable if the market is even big enough for multiple players,\u201d says Manny Azulay, owner of Ely\u2019s Fine Foods in Toronto. \u201cThe problem with the kosher guys in Canada is there\u2019s nowhere else to go. It\u2019s not that restaurant A is sourcing chicken from over here and it\u2019s cheaper than restaurant B, who\u2019s sourcing his chicken over there. We\u2019re all buying it from the same guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t true of just meat: there\u2019s enormous concentration across the kosher food sector nationally. COR and MK don\u2019t just provide\u00a0mashgiach\u00a0services; they are also the two largest kosher certifiers of packaged food and kosher slaughtered meat in Canada. \u201cIt\u2019s a double-edged sword,\u201d says Klein of\u00a0YeahThatsKosher.\u00a0\u201cOn one hand, the community probably trusts the option that\u2019s there, the COR or the MK. But it becomes an issue for kosher businesses because they\u2019re not really offered an opportunity to shop around. They don\u2019t have options. So whatever the price is, the price is. And that is in turn reflected in the price of kosher goods.\u201d<\/p>\n
A matter of faith<\/p>\n
For some who keep kosher, religious adherence is not a question of fair business practices or affordability. \u201cThe restaurant business complains a lot about it,\u201d says Ron Gersh, a government relations consultant who worked with a bidder, unsuccessfully, to secure a kosher chicken quota in Ontario. \u201cBut this is the business of kosher. You can\u2019t just say,\u00a0Trust me. That\u2019s not okay for people who keep kosher like myself. You want it at the highest standards. For some- one who is eating kosher, it\u2019s their connection to God. Eating food that is forbidden damages that connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keeping kosher, but not trusting the health standards of kosher meat producers, Gersh bought his own grass-finished cow and hired a\u00a0shochet\u00a0to do the slaughter, at a cost that makes him laugh. \u201cThis is what it means to be kosher,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd this is what God\u2019s people have to do. Everyone knew what they were getting into when they decided to live this lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lapidus says that hasn\u2019t always been the case. Over the last century, he says, Orthodox standards have become more strict, a phenomenon he attributes to a disconnection from living tradition.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the world wars and the Holocaust, says Lapidus, \u201cthe tradition of doing what your father and your zayde did was gone. Because most of them were dead. So instead of the mimetic tradition, where you imitate your parents, you went to books.\u201d It took some time for the full effects to be realized: in North America in the \u201960s and \u201970s, Orthodox Jews were still guided by yeshivot that had been established before the war, which tended to be more liberal. Their eventual waning \u201cled to a reliance on books, which make people more stringent. Because the book doesn\u2019t have a heart, the book doesn\u2019t give exceptions. The book is black and white, and you can\u2019t argue with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, says Lapidus, in the \u201970s, Orthodox Jews would have one oven, one sink, eat canned vegetables without a\u00a0hescher, kasher their dishwasher for Passover, and even go to the movies \u2014 all behaviour that is now deemed too liberal.<\/p>\n
It also took a couple of generations for upward social mobility to kick in, to the point where it was feasible for Jewish households to own more than one oven and pay for all the other infrastructure needed to keep meat and dairy as separate as has become the norm. \u201cYou go into houses today, you see two sinks,\u201d says Lapidus. \u201cBack in the day of my grandmother, nobody\u2019s building a second sink. Nobody had the money. You coped with one sink and you managed to be kosher in one sink.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking recently on The CJN podcast\u00a0Bonjour Chai, Lapidus explained that MK\u2019s Orthodox standards also place a financial burden on the larger constituency of non-Orthodox Jews. \u201cWhat I see is a\u00a0kashrus\u00a0setup that is not responding to the needs of individuals. One of the problems with contemporary\u00a0kashrus\u00a0is it\u2019s very much tied to economic social mobility.\u00a0Buy the bug-free broccoli for two or three times the price.\u00a0That\u2019s not fair or egalitarian for the whole community.\u201d<\/p>\n
These more stringent standards don\u2019t just affect what happens in home kitchens: they put pressure on every stage of the restaurant supply chain. End consumers \u2014 restaurant customers \u2014 cannot absorb every price increase. When the economy is strong, people spend money. When it\u2019s not, they don\u2019t. Discretionary spending on dining out is always one of the first casualties of budgetary restraint. The harsh reality is that religious Jews must eat kosher food but are not obliged to dine in restaurants. When it gets too expensive, they stop eating out. This makes restaurateurs terrified of passing their increased costs on to diners. \u201cYou end up either eating the increase yourself, which affects your margin,\u201d says Azulay, \u201cor you pass it along and it affects your business because people are not willing to pay for it anymore. Or you eat a little bit and pass on a little bit. All you get is margin erosion, a situation where you\u2019re making less money than you need to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite all these obstacles, Rachamim is optimistic. Eisenbergs started out as a non-kosher restaurant. Then they had the opportunity to open in the JCC, which required becoming kosher. \u201cThat was a big decision,\u201d says Rachamim. \u201cRestaurants are challenging. Being kosher is definitely more challenging. But going kosher for us was the best decision for our company. As soon as we became kosher, we realized that we levelled up and we\u2019re one of the top vendors in kosher.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Rachamim, the smaller market, though it creates challenges, is an advantage. \u201cThe reality of a kosher business is: it\u2019s niche. It\u2019s a small pool. So there\u2019s less competition. Because of that there\u2019s opportunity, and it\u2019s easy to flourish. I think if you have a good product in the kosher game, you should be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boaz Rachamim loved his first\u00a0feta cheese. It was soft and crumbly, perfect for the popular Greek salad at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[49,48,40981,60,2998,84,5820,395,48118],"class_list":["post-79511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-editors-picks","tag-featured","tag-food","tag-health","tag-kosher","tag-nutrition","tag-scribe-quarterly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}