By Morris Malakoff, JTNews Correspondent
Nothing says Jewish wintertime comfort food like the latke. The simple fried potato pancake with a dollop of sour cream and some applesauce comes with recipe variations depending on whose grandmother passed down the family recipe. Warm and hearty, it has a taste that can cause memories to come flooding back. Memories, perhaps, of watching one’s mother or grandmother or even favorite aunt lovingly assemble the ingredients as the aroma of freshly shredded potatoes and warming oil envelopes the kitchen. It is one of those foods that’s so good, you know it has to be bad for you. But who cares? Latkes only surface on the menu a few times a year.
But if Jill Ginsberg finds continued success in her food venture Thou Shall Snack, the tasty yet unhealthy latke will go from seasonal comfort food to year-round munchie.
Latke Crisps are the company’s signature product in a two-product line that also includes the sweet Babka Bites. The crisps are a kosher, no trans-fat, organic baked chip that has its genesis in the kitchen of her Grandma Rose.
Ginsberg, who lives near Green Lake in Seattle, grew up in a Conservative family in the Philadelphia area. After graduating from George Washington University with a degree in creative writing, she did a stint working in the media in Washington, D.C. Through friends, she discovered Seattle and decided to head west. After spending a couple of years in the area, she moved to Chapel Hill, N.C. and earned her MBA. With her University of North Carolina-crested sheepskin in hand, she returned to her adopted hometown and began experimenting in her kitchen.
“I wanted to find a way to take a labor-intensive food that was fried and make it into a healthier snack food that could be easily consumed,” Ginsberg said.
Throughout 2005, she victimized assorted friends and family members with her experimental batches of homemade snacks.
“I even had them fill out surveys,” she said. “They weren’t the most unbiased sample in the world, but they were what was available.”
Ginsberg never claims the culinary prowess of Rachael Ray or Martha Stewart — or even her Grandma Rose. But she felt she was on to something with her goodies and she is also a confident businesswoman.
“I had no education in the food industry in school, but I knew that I could run a business and figure out the steps involved in marketing and manufacturing,” she said.
Still, she knew that she was stepping off into the unknown and so had her share of sleepless nights.
“I even had my garage certified as a warehouse,” she said. “I have never had to use it, but I wasn’t so sure at the beginning.”
While she herself operates out of a home office, the nuts-and-bolts operations of her business are closer to her childhood home, in New York and New Jersey. The factory that produces the product is in New York, while her marketing and brokers are in New Jersey. That means her phone can start ringing as early as 6 a.m. to start a day that ends late into the evening, when she personally processes the orders that come in from around the world via her Web site, www.thoushallsnack.com.
Thou Shall Snack products began appearing on store shelves a year ago, and have sold nearly a half-million units since then at a retail price of $2.79 for a three ounce bag. The product is easily found in metropolitan areas with large Jewish populations, such as in the Northeast and Florida.
Market penetration has also been helped by the product being stocked in such large regional grocery stores as Publix and Winn-Dixie (which are ubiquitous in the Southeast) and in Whole Foods stores in selected regions of the U.S., although not in Seattle.
The product line of Thou Shall Snack is available at other selected outlets in the Seattle area that are easily located through the Web site. Ginsberg also sells case-sized orders via the Internet.
Latke Crisps got an unexpected boost this month when they were selected to grace the shelves of nearly 400 Wal-Mart stores with a grocery component through Hanukkah. According to a list supplied by her broker, the Bonney Lake Wal-Mart in Pierce County is one such location.
If Ginsberg had one concern as she began her business, it was educating the snack consumer as to what a latke is. While that may not be a problem in Miami, Brooklyn or even Houston, it has led to an interesting collision of food cultures such as when she talks to customers in a place like rural Texas who call Seattle to ask about the product.
“They often call them latté crisps,” she said.