Food firms feeding kosher items' surge

BRADENTON, Fla. - Rabbi Shalom Adler slips a thin net over his short red hair and black yarmulke, another over his bushy beard. He pops in bright orange earplugs. A pair of bulky protective goggles cover his wire-framed spectacles.

Inspector Rabbi is now in service.

For the last several weeks, Adler, codirector of the Chabad of Pinellas County, has brought his rabbinical knowledge of Jewish dietary law to the Tropicana plant in Bradenton.

Adler, who works for the Organized Kosher certification company, inspects the production of a special run of kosher-for-Passover orange juice.

Year-round, most of Tropicana's products meet kosher standards. But to prepare for the eight-day Passover holiday, which begins April 2, the company takes its kosherization process several steps further, designating two separate assembly lines just for production of the juice.

Tropicana's moves underscore a broader push in the food industry to make more kosher foods available, particularly kosher-for-Passover varieties.

A decade ago, about 60,000 kosher products were available in supermarkets; today there are more than 100,000, reports Lubicom Marketing Consulting, a food-industry tracker in New York that publishes the weekly newsletter Kosher Today.

Industry types attribute the surge in kosher goods to the outgrowth of the Orthodox Jewish community in the United States beyond the traditional base of New York, in addition to a more health-conscious non-Jewish consumer base embracing kosher foods for a perceived nutritional benefit.

"There are people who like kosher deli or pickles, and Muslims who don't eat pork and might find eating kosher as a convenient way to adhere to their religion," said Menachem Lubinsky, president of Lubicom Marketing. "Kosher has benefited from all of these dynamics coming into play at the same time."

More than 40 percent of an estimated $250 billion in annual kosher-food sales takes place during the Passover season, Lubinsky said.

Food companies and grocers are taking their kosher expansion further and tapping into the Passover market. Doing so means "connecting with potential customers even after Passover," Lubinsky said.

Well-known companies such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks are now designating some products as kosher for Passover. Coca-Cola, which switches out corn syrup for pure cane sugar in its Classic Coke during Passover, distinguishes the bottles with a distinctive yellow cap, according to the Orthodox Union, another company that certifies the company's products.