A Girl's Gotta Eat

A NY Times article announced today that "Manischewitz Wants to Move to a Mainstream Aisle." Don't misunderstand, they still want to cater your Passover seder. They just want your Christian friends to break open a bottle of Manischewitz wine around the Christmas tree, too.

(Come to think of it, after drinking at my place last Passover, one of my friends recently bought a bottle of kosher wine she might bring to her Bible study. I should get paid.)

One of the ways Manischewitz is hoping to achieve their goal is by putting ads in mainstream magazines. Another is to hold a kosher cooking contest that they hope will become "the new Pillsbury bake-off." I have to say, I find their advertising tactics disappointing. They're targeting women in their mid-thirties to mid-fifties in a way that comes off as surprisingly old fashioned. One ad shows a woman who's sorta a Jewish Desperate Housewives type. Dark coif, long-sleeved cardigan, apron. Would look like an Orthodox woman if you saw her in a Jewish mag, but not so much that you'd notice otherwise. The chief executive of their advertising company explained that "The soccer mom is our quintessential Mrs. Manischewitz. She can be anyone with three kids in a minivan. She can also be someone who has the weekly Sabbath dinner to prepare." Ech. A little too........Pleasantville.

I much prefer the Hebrew National campaign. It plays up the idea that kosher products are cleaner, "answering to a higher authority." The new commercial that shows how only the front half of the cow is used in their hot dogs along with some "no ifs, ands, or buts" pun is great--Very creative and appeals to people of all ages--Soccer moms AND young people who are likely to be eating a lot of easy-to-make hot dogs and deli sandwiches.

On a related note, an article on the OK website mentions that ConAgra has bought the company that makes Hebrew National brand products (hot dogs, turkey slices, etc.) and plans to find a way to combine Hebrew National with its mainstream Healthy Choice line. Microwavable dinners that are kosher AND taste good? Now THAT would be exciting!

Part of what's so promising about this new trend is that if these traditional kosher companies are trying to reach out to non-Jewish pocketbooks, then they may actually have to make sure their products not only meet halachic standards, but taste good as well! Part of the problem with (some) kosher foods is that they have their market trapped. You're going to eat it whether the food is "acceptable" or amazing. Of course, if there's a tastier kosher option, the "just okay" one will lose out, but kosher food companies do have something of a hold on their markets. Harvey Potkin, President of National Foods, commented that "there's the opportunity to mainstream a lot of kosher products, but the price and quality have to be acceptable to the mainstream population." You mean CHEAP microwavable kosher dinners that taste good? Somebody pass me a fork!