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Pizza
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Macabee Kosher Foods
Since 1968, Macabee Foods has produced premium quality kosher frozen pizza products for the entire family.
We started with a variety of delicious items, including pizza bagels, pizza squares, regular pizzas and French bread pizza products. Over the years, we’ve extended our delicious line, and today we keep pace with the nutritional requirements of carbohydrate-conscious consumers with products like our brand new Low Carb 3 Cheese Pizza Bagels.
All of our products carry the OU symbol.
For over 35 years we’ve remained committed to product quality and to our relationship with the Orthodox Union. On an individual basis, our products are Cholov Yisroel, Pas Yisroel, Bishul Yisroel, Parve or Yoshon, and all of our products carry the OU symbol of kashrut and quality. We specially design our products for flavor, cooking convenience and value.
Our relationship with the OU is critical to the quality of our products, the satisfaction of our customers and our ultimate business success. Discerning kosher customers will only purchase products with kosher symbols they recognize and trust. At Macabee Kosher, we believe that the OU is a symbol of true kosher certification for the broadest base of our core kosher consumers.
For our entire existence we’ve been a category leader and product innovator, with a deep commitment to developing quality products. Working with the OU, our industry leadership will surely continue.
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Thursday, January 20, 2005
An Upscale Brand of Pizza
Upscale Foods, of the St. Paul, MN suburb of New Hope, was established in 1998 when the Orthodox owners of a kosher food distribution company acquired a kosher food manufacturing facility with a product line known as “The Old City Café.” Old City was originally a restaurant, but over time it evolved into a producer of frozen foods, most notably frozen pizza.
Shortly after the acquisition, the new owners arranged for Orthodox Union supervision, which — in a major business development for Upscale — enabled the new company to produce pizza for “Empire Kosher,” which uses OU certification exclusively on all of its poultry and frozen food products.
Upscale currently manufactures a variety of products under a number of different national brands and private labels, including its own “The Old City Café” award-winning pizza and burrito lines. The company’s production line is run on a day-to-day basis by Managing Partner
Rabbi Yaakov Roberts, who worked under the guidance of his late father, Rev. Shepsel Roberts. Yaakov Roberts is no stranger to the food industry, having over thirty years experience with food processing and distribution. “There is no question that the OU is the best known and best recognized kosher certification available today,
just as it was thirty years ago when I went into the business,” declared Rabbi Roberts. “Having OU certification in our plant has enabled us to enter into relationships with companies whose customers demand the highest level of kosher supervision.”
In 2002, Upscale Foods began plans for upgrading and relocating its plant in New Hope to a new state-of-the-art facility with greater capacity and improved capabilities. From the initial design elements to the finished construction, the Upscale Foods facility was built to be a
fully certified USDA meat and poultry processing plant, with pareve and dairy components as well. The company specializes in all-natural, ethnic, and gourmet frozen specialties — all kosher, of course.
Products manufactured at its facility in New Hope include pizza, burritos, wraps, enchiladas, macaroni and cheese and other varieties. They are manufactured for the retail, food service and private label trades and include a wide variety of items made for nationally known OU certified companies.
Given the fact that Upscale Foods manufactures pizza to be sold under a variety of brand names, it uses different recipes given the requirements of each of the brands. For example, some of the brands will be made with an apple cider mix, others with a water mix; whether the pizza includes apple cider or not sometimes determines the kind of blessing to be made over the pizza when it is eaten. Nevertheless, there are certain characteristics that all of the Upscale Foods pizza lines share, according to Vice President of National Sales, Yaakov Bellinsky. “All of our pizzas are produced under OU supervision, at an Orthodox-owned, Sabbath-observant company,” he explained. “Likewise, all of the pizzas are not only kosher, but are all-natural – that is, they contain no preservatives. So you will find us in two locations in a store, the kosher section, and the all-natural section,” Mr. Bellinsky explained.
Regarding the Upscale Foods-OU relationship, Mr. Bellinsky declared, “From our perspective, it has been a pleasure working with the Orthodox Union. The OU is always available to answer our questions and is very responsive to our needs. We’ve enjoyed our relationship with the OU and look forward to extending it as we add more private label brands to our product line in the future.”
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Look Up in the Sky: It?s a Bird, It?s a Plane ? No, It?s a Kosher Pizza www.flyingpizzas.com
A pizza, it is true, looks like a flying saucer, or even a giant frisbee. But despite their appearance, pizzas won’t fly unless they are Eddie Fishbaum’s “Flying Pizzas,” baked at Brooklyn’s Broadway’s Jerusalem 2 pizza parlor, which is OU certified.
Eddie’s pizzas fly wherever Federal Express will take them, which is far indeed. They have gone to a honeymooning couple at the Grand Canyon, to Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and all across North America, not to mention Russia, South America, Europe and Asia.
Eddie’s website http://www.flyingpizzas.com includes the following pizza and non-pizza selections: “Real New York Pizza,” for $19.95 with free shipping; one pound of cinnamon rugelach (a small, very tasty pastry), for $17.95, also with free shipping; a “Broadway Gift Pack,”
including one pizza and a pound of rugelach for $32.90; two pounds of rugelach, for $32.95; four cheese pizzas for $64.92 with free shipping; 12 cheese pizzas for $179.95, and other treats.
Eddie Fishbaum has been in the pizza business since he started making kosher pies after school in Brooklyn, NY when he was 12 years old. By the age of 14, Eddie was a master pizza maker, serving as many as 300 pies in a single day. Years later, he and his brother Ari (now deceased) opened Jerusalem 2, on Broadway, in the Manhattan Garment Center, not far from Times Square. Now the business is based in Brooklyn, where he serves some 2,000 pizzas every week (except during Passover), plus other dishes.
In November 1995, after developing special packaging, the brothers started flying their pizzas, according to Eddie, “because so many people from all over the country ask us to open up a pizza store in their neighborhood.
We’re giving them the next best thing. It’s as if they have us right next door.”
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