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10 Questions for Reisman’s Bakery By M. Lowinger Let’s play a game. I’ll tell you a word and you tell me what that word brings to mind. Ready? Here goes. “Purim!” For most people reading this column, the word “Purim” brought up images of hamantashen. And when you’re talking about hamantashen the hamantash that come to mind is inevitably Reisman’s ubiquitous three-cornered nosh. In a world filled with self-proclaimed foodies and Instagram chefs, the classic and timeless Reisman’s hamantash is still universally accepted as the best of the bunch. This week, we caught up with Esther from Reisman’s who was able to give us a very small glimpse into the company that churns out hundreds of thousands of hamantashen a year around the globe. Esther, we all know the name but not much about who the Reismans are. Our bakery was started by two brothers, Avrum and Berel Reisman, both Holocaust survivors. Avrum was the baker and Berel was the salesman. They opened in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in 1962. There were lots of bakeries in Brooklyn during the late-1900s. What was special about Reisman’s? Avrum and Berel were innovative and creative. They were the first to come up with the idea of selling packaged baked goods in groceries and supermarkets. Now everyone does it, of course. But back then you bought your rugelach in a bakery and your milk in a grocery. Their first really big break was when Waldbaum’s starting selling their products. Then other supermarkets followed. Purim is here and with it comes our yearly hamantashen-noshing trance. Do you sell the hamantashen all year-round? Yes we do. In our community, hamantashen sell primarily during the Purim season. But in the general market, they are sold all year-round. Only the name is changed. We call them Fruit Tarts! Well, what’s in a name anyway, as long as it has a sweet filling and soft, flaky dough. Has the recipe changed over the years? Not really, but we’ve added some new filling flavors. Years ago, it was all about prune or poppy seed. Now we offer raspberry, apricot, chocolate, mango, and pomegranate. Which flavors are the most popular? Raspberry and apricot, for sure. And chocolate is a close runner up. How many hamantashen do you bake? The weeks before Purim, Reisman’s Bakery bakes a whopping 124,000 hamantashen per day – and they’re all pinched by hand. Reisman’s hamantashen are everywhere. Where’s the furthest you ever shipped them? All over North America, including Hawaii and Canada. We send them to Lubavitch shluchim, shuls, temples, and organizations throughout the country. We’ve also sent them to Jewish soldiers on army bases and prisoners through the Aleph Institute. Hamantashen have a long shelf life, so the orders start coming in well before Adar. Wow! That’s a lot of hamantashen! What are some unusual requests that have been made? People constantly ask us to make different flavors or colors to match their Purim theme. We’ve been asked to do coffee flavor and purple jam, to name just two. Much as we’d like to, we can’t really accommodate everyone’s requests. So far, just today, I’ve eaten a whole box of hamantashen. Tell me, how many calories are in a Reisman’s hamantasch? Each one is about 100 calories. A hundred calories doesn’t sound too bad, although a whole box of them, on the other hand... Hamantashen aside, what’s your most popular product? The Brownie Bar, no question about it. People can’t get enough of them. And there’s an interesting story behind it. The Reisman brothers once went to a bakery show and saw a machine that manufactures knishes. They decided to buy it and experimented with chocolate instead! After months of trial and error, the Brownie Bar was born! I now have added respect for knishes, as it is through them that the Brownie Bar was born.

While many bakeries are associated with the city they serve, a kosher wholesale bakery crosses geographical boundaries, bringing traditional tastes to consumers thousands of miles away from the delicious aromas of their industrial-sized ovens.For Reisman’s bakery, the story began in 1962 with a small operation on the corner of Avenue O and West 7th in Brooklyn. Today, Reisman’s range of kosher baked goods is distributed by Pathmark, Shoprite, A &P, and Albertson’s among other mega-chains. Their Brownie Bars, found in assorted gas stations and convenience stores are the go-to product for a hungry Jew on the highway. Shipped from Brooklyn, Reisman’s range retails all over the US as well as in Mexico, Canada, England, Switzerland and Belgium.Baking takes place daily at Reisman’s, with the ovens starting at five in the morning. Twenty people are involved in the production process, another thirty in the distribution network.Although the Reismans have added new products and made variations to sustain interest, their popularity is an outcome of consistency, and after three generations in the business, the best-selling item is still those ubiquitous, delicious Brownie Bars. Mr. Friedman opines that this iconic product’s sustained popularity has made it part of kosher culture—“an advertising campaign a couple of years ago featured a picture of just a brownie bar, with respondents asked to name the item and the company which produces it, and correct replies just flooded in. They came from five year olds and from sixty year olds—it was unbelievable!”What makes Reisman’s special? “We want to keep our customers for life,” Mr. Friedman explains. “That was my grandfather’s philosophy and I learned the business from him. Over here the customer is always right, and will be treated like gold. That’s what keeps them coming back—as well as a consistently great product, of course.”As well as supplying the Kosher market, Reismans distributes widely in the Southern US and in Mexico. Mr Friedman explains that the products retail to non-kosher consumers based on their great taste, and the Reismans have made adaptations to gear them to new tastebuds. “Different cultures have different preferences. For the Jewish market, chocolate flavor is the perennial best-seller, but non-Jews tend to prefer cinnamon and fruit flavors. Hamantaschen are a real hit with our non-Jewish consumers, selling the whole year round. We’ve even come up with new fillings, like mango and other fruits, which are a hot item in Mexico!” Published September 2018

As I strolled down Essex Street on a recent afternoon, I noticed something strange about an otherwise ordinary threesome of garrulous black teens passing me on the sidewalk. One of the boys was holding a square sheet of matzoh, ready to take a bite. I made note of the episode for its novelty value, but afterward didn't give it too much thought. Whereas I had to eat it eight days out of the year at the expense of all other grain and never became fond of it, I know some non-Jews who enjoy eating the unleavened bread as a snack. After an eye-opening visit to Reisman Bros. Bakery in Bensonhurst, the country's first and oldest kosher wholesale baker, that moment on the Lower East Side transformed from non sequitur to something much more significant. The purpose of my visit to Reisman Bros. was to check out their hamantaschen, the jam-filled triangular cookie eaten on the Jewish holiday of Purim, which falls on March 6 this year. I learned that these treats aren't just for the holidays anymore. Turns out, in addition to their secular line of baked goods, Reisman's makes a fine business of selling these ceremonial cookies year round, mostly to non-Jews. Shia Friedman, the baby-faced grandson of bakery co-founder Ben Reisman, said that since having introduced hamantaschen?modeled after the three-cornered hat worn by Haman, the villain of the Purim story?to the mainstream market, the cookie's sales grew dramatically. They are now only second to ruggalah. "Jewish persons, they associate hamantaschen with Purim," said Friedman, a gentle kippah-clad redhead. "They're not going to eat it all year round. But now that we started selling them to non-Jewish areas, hamantaschen sales have grown by four or five times. They don't care if it's for Purim or not; if they like how it tastes, they'll buy it." By "non-Jewish areas," Friedman refers to supermarkets that don't cater specifically to a kosher clientele. It also doesn't hurt that for 10 months out of the year, Reisman Bros. changes the name on the package from "Hamantaschen" to "Fruit Tarts"?the cookie equivalent of a box containing matzoh being sold as "crackers." Although the gentile world has helped Jewish foods cross over?note the bagel?the newfound popularity of hamantaschen is more akin to eating challah, the ceremonial Sabbath bread, in the form of French toast at a local diner. But unlike bagels or babka, hamantaschen is a food of religious symbolism that is being embraced by those outside of the faith as a fruit-filled cookie. Friedman maintains that, in the end, people's tastes aren't all that different. "When I sampled our chocolate babka in the non-Jewish markets," Friedman recalls, "Italians would come over to me and say, 'My mother used to make something that smelled just like this.'"