O.C. Grocers Keep Current by Going Kosher

When Bernice Tabak went shopping at her local Albertsons in Irvine last week, she was delighted to find exactly what she was looking for: a chicken.

Not just any chicken. “Fresh kosher chicken,” she said. “Not frozen fresh, but fresh.”

As Orange County’s Jewish population has grown in recent years, so too has the number of mainstream grocery stores offering a wide range of kosher foods--in particular, Passover products adhering to strict dietary guidelines governing the eight-day holiday that commemorates the deliverance of Jews from slavery.

“I’ve been here in Orange County for 22 years,” said Tabak, principal of the Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School in Irvine. “When I first got here, you could find virtually nothing kosher.” There was one kosher market in Los Alamitos, she said, “or you had to go to L.A.”

Or, as Rabbi Arnold Rachlis of University Synagogue in Irvine put it: “To commemorate the exodus from Egypt, [Jews] had to make the exodus from Orange County just to stock up on food.”

No more. As the county’s 80,000 to 100,000 Jews prepare traditional Seders beginning tonight, they’re increasingly finding there’s no need to trek to Los Angeles’ Fairfax district or the Pico-Robertson neighborhood to find everything from bitter herbs and the ingredients for sweet charoset to pastries without leavening and kosher meats.

No, Ralphs, Vons, Albertsons and Stater Brothers will do just fine.

“Two things have happened in Orange County,” said Gregory Nathanson, a manager for Gourmet Award Foods in Los Angeles, the biggest distributor of kosher products outside New York City.

“Our company has shown the major retailers that the community was moving there. The second part is that supermarkets have become much more sophisticated” about catering to the needs of ethnic consumers.

Sales of specialty kosher products in Orange County have doubled in the past five years, Nathanson said, although he estimated that 75% of those sales are concentrated at only four stores--two in Irvine and two in Laguna Woods. A decade ago, he said, the Orange County market was minuscule.

“Ten years ago, we only merchandised kosher products at stores that shopped very heavily kosher,” mostly on L.A.’s Westside, said Karen Ramos, a spokeswoman for Albertsons. “What we found is that kosher customers are everywhere. They’re not just concentrated in pockets.”

Today, Ramos said, 237 Albertsons in Southern California--the vast majority of them--have Passover displays. The biggest growth has been in Orange and Riverside counties.

“It’s a recognition of the growth of the Jewish community. But it’s also a recognition that ... not everybody who buys kosher foods is Jewish,” she said.

Indeed, the growth of the kosher market in Orange County mirrors a national trend. About 18,000 of the 30,000 grocery stores in the United States now have a kosher section--up from 3,000 a decade ago, said Menachem Lubinsky, whose New York marketing firm publishes the trade paper Kosher Today.

Last year, consumers spent about $5.75 billion on kosher foods, nearly twice as much as in 1996, Lubinsky said. It’s a market being propelled not only by Jews but by Muslims, vegetarians and consumers seeking healthier food.

“We’re seeing a lot of people crossing over to the kosher experience,” Lubinsky said.

Even so, the kosher experience for some Jews in Orange County means a trip to the markets, butchers and bakeries in Los Angeles where they’ve shopped for years.

For Marla Kaufman, the trek is a Passover tradition unique to Southern California. Last week, Kaufman, who has lived in Orange County for nine years, journeyed to Pico-Robertson and shopped for three families, spending $500.

“I came from there; I have friends who I left behind there,” said Kaufman, 42. “You can be having lunch and see a teenager roller-blading by with a ... yarmulke, and you feel like you’re in more of a Jewish neighborhood. There’s a flavor there, a bustling of people.

“Going to buy a box of matzo at Albertsons--it’s not the same thing.”