Eden Teva Market. Now kosher
Eden Teva Market goes kosher
Natural foods supermarket obtains Chief Rabbinate kosher certification after investing NIS 500,000 in making more than 700 products kosher
The organic and health food supermarket chain Eden Teva Market, controlled by Alon Holdings Blue Square-Israel and Dudi Weisman is for the first time turning into a kosher supermarket under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate on Sunday.
Guy Provisor, founder-CEO of the natural foods supermarket, told Yedioth Ahronoth, "For more than a year, we have invested NIS 500,000 (about $137,700) in making kosher more than 700 products, mainly dairy and items imported from the Far East."
Until now, the supermarket has been blocked from obtaining a kosher certificate due to its imported products that are not under kosher supervision. In addition, the supermarket has recently launched its Eden Meat factory, which will supply meat exclusively to the supermarket's butchers, thus assuring uniform quality standards.
Eden Meat is kosher under the supervision of the Kfar Saba Rabbinate.
Eden Teva Market currently runs 10 branches, with another three slated to be opened by the end of 2010 in Beersheba, Rehovot, and YOO Towers in Tel Aviv with an investment of NIS 20 million (about $5.5 million).
The supermarket's owners expect that the kosher certification will increase sales by 5-8%. "Even though we behaved in essence like a kosher supermarket, closing on Shabbat and not selling pork and seafood products, parts of the public would not step in the store because we did not have official kosher certification," explained Provisor.
The supermarket recently launched a new initiative to open Eden Teva Market mini-branches within Mega supermarkets. Six such store-within-a-store models are slated to be in operation by the end of 2011.
All of the chain's branches are under the authorization and supervision of the organization advisory groups Agrior Organic Inspection and Certification and Tuv Hasadeh.
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