N.Y. Family’s Business Success Is Rooted in Tradition
The eve of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, was once a time of tears for women like Morris Gold’s mother and grandmother. Rosh Hashana meant gefilte fish, and gefilte fish meant horseradish--the powerful condiment that stings the eyes and clears the sinuses.
Gold, 77, recalls watching the women of the family sitting on milk crates by the window of their Brooklyn apartment, peeling and cutting up horseradish and beets.
And crying.
Housewives (and husbands) at the turn of the 21st century need not cry over horseradish anymore, mostly because of the Gold family, by far America’s greatest purveyors of bottled horseradish.
“We’ll do the crying for you,” proclaims Morris Gold.
Gold’s started selling horseradish in the Depression, and now has accounts in virtually every state (Hawaii yes, Alaska no). It sends horseradish to England, Australia, Israel, South Africa, Russia and Brazil.
Now reaching into a fifth generation of Golds, the privately held firm estimates its share of the U.S. market at about 70%, with annual sales between $15 million and $20 million.
“ ‘Fresh, fresh, fresh,’ my father has always preached to me,” Morris’ son Marc says over the din of machinery in the company’s Long Island plant, where 75,000 pounds of horseradish roots are ground and bottled each day. “That’s the key to our success.”
A combination of the grated horseradish root with vinegar and salt (with beets for the slightly weaker red version) is all there is to the mixture that has been called everything from magic elixir to aphrodisiac.
“People are uneducated about horseradish,” explains Marc, 48, who runs the business with brother Steve and cousins Neil and Howard, all of whom have had their teen-age daughters working summers at the plant for the last couple of years. “It perks you up because it opens your pores and makes you sweat. Try mixing it with mustard or on a tuna sandwich and you’ll never go back to eating without it.”
Though mostly known for use around Rosh Hashana and Passover, horseradish also has strong sales for Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving.
“Horseradish is by no means just a Jewish item,” says Marc Gold, a true horseradish evangelist. “It works on turkey, on steak, in salad dressing. Since you can enjoy it on virtually any type of food, the uses for it are unlimited.”
Named for “galloping roots” which grew in the wilds of Eastern Europe, horseradish comes mostly from the Midwest and eastern Canada. The gnarled roots are shipped to Gold’s in burlap sacks or 1,300-pound wrapped pallets and are kept in a storage room at 34 degrees.
The horseradish is shredded, mixed with salt and vinegar and then crammed into Gold’s patented six-sided glass jars at a rate of 180 jars per minute. It takes about 2 minutes for an empty 6-ounce jar to be filled, capped, labeled, sealed and boxed.
In the room where the boxed bottles await pickup, the aroma of horseradish is so strong that eyes water within minutes.
Gold’s began in 1932 with Morris’ father Hyman, an immigrant from Poland. After a cousin who grated vegetables in front of a Brooklyn storefront became embroiled in a dispute with his landlord and was tossed in jail, Hyman bailed him out and wound up with the discarded grinder. He took it home to wife Tillie, and they decided to grind horseradish in their apartment and sell it on the streets of Brooklyn.
“My father went out in the neighborhood and would take orders for three jars here and four jars there, and we kids would deliver them by bicycle,” recalls Morris, who built the business to what it is today with brothers Manny and Herb.
“One time I gave away an extra bottle after selling a case [24 bottles] and my father yelled at me because that was the profit, that 25th jar. After all, this was in the middle of the Great Depression.”
Sales also were made in neighborhoods too far to reach on foot.
“My father and I would go by train and he would sell the horseradish to merchants in the area,” Morris adds. “But I would stay in the station on the train side of the turnstile because the profit would be that nickel fare.”
