GOING HOME TO BROOKLYN

FROM KOSHER TODAY- TUESDAY, 9/2/08

Brooklyn still the nation’s kosher center for many shoppers
Brooklyn, NY…Lisa, a mother of four, travelled from Philadelphia to Brooklyn to visit the new Pomegranate store in Midwood and left with a trunkload of kosher goodies, including some flavored gluten crackers for her diabetic husband. In the parking lot were license plates from New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland, in addition to New York. Doris, a PR specialist from Englewood, NJ, always travels to Brooklyn on the eve of the Jewish holidays to stock up on many kosher products she says are not available in the stores that carry kosher foods near her. She particularly does “her big order” for Passover at Moshe’s, which is not far from Pomegranate. Doris and Lisa are part of a growing number of people who make the pilgrimage to Brooklyn to stock up on the many kosher items available there, and interestingly enough, to an area they believe offers items that are less expensive than at their local stores. Brooklyn kosher retailers say that they have always catered to “out-of-towners,” even when kosher foods became more available in communities outside of New York. Brooklyn, it seems, has become for many what the Lower East Side may have been just a half century ago. It is where kosher shoppers can find a greater variety of meats, dairy items, and kosher health foods. With Rosh Hashanah less than a month away, retailers expect many non-Brooklyn shoppers to be amongst the hordes of customers that will soon crowd the aisles. “Many people with roots in Brooklyn who have left the community come back here to shop,” said one retailer. “Visiting the old neighborhood seemed to have been quite popular this summer,” said another the retailer. For many, the visit turned out to be costly, as they left the borough with a car-full of food.