When I’m stressed I think:

how nice it is to be in an environment where the week revolves around Shabbos, and most of the people I’m with (customers and employees) are such good, frum people.

Something I could never manage without:

all our dedicated employees and of course, loads of siyata d’Shmaya!

The Last Minute

The store closes at least two hours before Shabbos, l’kavod Shabbos. But there is always something that comes up at the last minute, and the managers aren’t going to let a Jew go without what he needs for Shabbos.

“Sometimes someone has just arrived from the hospital or out of town and comes running to grab something just as we’ve locked the doors, and we’ll reopen to let them get it. We have no time to open a register at that point, so people just take what they need and come to pay after Shabbos.

“Once, though, someone called me to open the store ten minutes before Shabbos. There was no time to get to and from the store at that point, but I told him if he really needed food, he could come and get from my house.”

Gourmet Glatt

Location: Six different stores all over the Tristate area

Jr. spoke to Howie Klagsbrun, Gourmet Glatt’s director of purchasing, to hear how they prepare for Shabbos.

Supply Chain Issues

Many people all over the world aren’t able to go to work because they’re sick or in quarantine — or their kids are. So let’s say the factory that makes the caps for the ketchup bottles isn’t able to make enough caps. Even if the ketchup producer has everything else they need, they can’t make ketchup if they don’t have the caps. If they didn’t get enough safety seals (that little foil circle on top of the bottle), or even just the glue that they use to attach the safety seals, that’s already enough to delay your ketchup.

Right now you may have noticed you can’t get your favorite flavor of fruit roll up or Fruit by the Foot. That’s because there’s a starch shortage. Starch is a necessary ingredient, so if the company makes 50 different flavors, but they don’t have enough starch to make all of them, they’re only going to make the most popular flavors.

What’s for Shabbos Party?

The treats kids want are always changing, and Mr. Klagsbrun does his best to keep up with the trends. “I don’t know which kid started it, but a little while ago everyone wanted pink lemonade flavored sour sticks. When Skittles became kosher, everyone had to have them.” It seems like every few weeks it’s something else.

The store has a pretty good idea of the exact amounts that people usually buy. It gets tricky when the usual things aren’t available, and they have to guess what people are going to want instead.

Best guarantee:

Tell us your Purim theme in advance so we can try to make sure to stock what you need, and your confidentiality is guaranteed. We try to get everything people could possibly want for Purim — in every shape and color — but it’s so much easier if we didn’t have to guess what you’ll want.

All Week Long

In the summer, most people shop on Thursday and Friday. In the winter, it’s Wednesday and Thursday. “But for the first Shabbos after the clock moves back from summer to winter, people usually forget they have to do things earlier, and people are usually a little panicked on that first early Friday,” says Mr. Klagsbrun.

But for the store, Shabbos is truly an all-week affair. The advertisements have to be prepared on Sunday to let you know what Shabbos delights will be on sale later in the week. Merchandise has to be ordered from all the suppliers earlier in the week to be in the store in time for your shopping trip at the end of the week.

“Thursdays may look busy in the store, but for me that’s the easiest day, everything has already been done. If a product won’t arrive in time for Wednesday or Thursday when most people do their big shop, we either won’t order it, or we’ll save it for the next week. Everything in the store revolves around Shabbos,” Mr. Klagsbrun tells us.

Uh-Oh

Once, someone called the store on Friday afternoon and said their order didn’t arrive, but the store’s records showed that the order had already been delivered. It seems the delivery truck had made a small mistake in the address. When the order arrived at the wrong house, the housekeeper there had no idea that no one had made an order and had unpacked and put away every single item. “There wasn’t enough time to get it all back before Shabbos, so we put together a new order and made sure it went to the right address in time for Shabbos,” says Mr. Klagsbrun.

The Nuttery

Location: Brooklyn, Lakewood, Williamsburg, and Monroe

The Nuttery sells candy, popcorn, dried fruit, nuts, chocolates, milkshakes, and coffees in almost any flavor you can imagine. All the nuts they sell are roasted in-house, and their customers love the smell. This place is Shabbos-treat heaven! Parents often come in to let their children choose the treats they want to buy for Shabbos.

There’s a grandmother who is a regular customer at the Brooklyn location. Every year on her birthday she makes a trip with all her kids and grandkids to the store, and they can each choose whatever they want. Then they take a family photo holding their treats.

When someone comes in and requests a platter, Mr. Goldstein’s first question is always, what is it for? A shalom zachar or a bar mitzvah? In a hall or in a home? The answer will help him guide you to the perfect combination of candy or nuts or chocolates to fit the occasion.

Variety

“People like change, so we’re always trying to come up with new things. Right now, halvah covered pecans are a very hot item. A lot of people tell me they don’t like halvah, but then they taste them and think they’re delicious!” Mr. Goldstein says.

Every other Thursday, The Nuttery offers free tastings of a new product, so people can sample the treat to decide if they’d like to add it to their Shabbos purchase.

Busiest Time

Unlike groceries and ingredients which are bought and then cooked at home, everything at The Nuttery is ready to eat, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Friday is their busiest day. Preparation starts on Sunday when they take inventory of what was sold the previous week so they can see exactly what they need for the coming week. Then they start roasting the nuts and wrapping the trays. Some people shop for Shabbos as early as Wednesday, but most come Thursday or Friday. The store gets busier the closer it gets to Shabbos. The earlier you come, the bigger selection you’re going to find and the better the service you’re going to get.

But you can’t always come early. Once, a man ran into the store 45 minutes before the zeman, straight from the hospital. His wife had just given birth to a baby boy, and he needed to make a shalom zachor!

Faster Service

In a grocery store everything has barcodes, so the cashier can quickly scan your groceries. But there are no bar codes in a candy store, where everyone is filling bags and containers. It used to take a long time to ring up an order. Now there are stickers next to every bin for customers to stick on their bags so the cashier can scan them at checkout.

The four Nuttery stores sell a whopping total of 1,500 bags of popcorn EVERY SINGLE WEEK.

What’s the most popular item in the store?

Plain salted cashews.

The Fishing Line

Location: Lakewood, NJ

Salmon, tuna, whitefish, tilapia, herring, seabass; baked, fried, seared, or cured; spicy or sweet or anything in between. You can get many varieties of fish at The Fishing Line. So how do you choose? Moshe recommends you come in Friday morning to see the selection and decide for yourself what tempts you! He’ll even prepare your fish any way you’d like it.

A Fish Emergency

When Moshe tells me the store has an emergency line, I think he must be joking. Who ever heard of a fish emergency (Hello, my fish broke his fin)? “The store closes at 2:00 p.m. in the winter and 4:00 p.m. in the summer on Fridays. Often, people will realize that they need something after that. So we have an emergency line for after hours, and the managers keep checking the line. There’s a great guy, Yakov Stefansky, who runs back to the store, often already in his suit and tie, to get whatever the caller needs.”

What’s the most popular fish?

Definitely salmon, in every form and flavor.

Busiest Days

You can buy your fish already cooked or cured at The Fishing Line, but a lot of women like to buy raw fish and prepare it their own way. Wednesday and Thursday are the busiest days, with Friday not following far behind. Erev Shabbos is very busy at The Fishing Line, but Moshe says it’s not stressful since they’ve been in business for years and know exactly what to expect.

Thursdays there’s a mini hot takeout available and Fridays a full hot takeout. The Fishing Line begins preparing at 5:00 a.m. so that by 8:30 a.m. all the fish is cooked — hot and fresh and ready to buy.

Uh, What Order?

Apparently, it’s happened more than once that someone called the emergency line because they never received their order. But then when someone checked the records, they realized that no one ever placed an order! “It happens,” says Moshe. “People are busy making a simchah, there’s so much to do, they don’t realize that they never placed an order for the fish platters. But it’s no problem, we run to the store and put together some platters for them. We don’t like to run out of anything, so we usually have enough extras to pull together what they’re looking for.”

Once a woman came before Pesach asking for “falshe fish,” which means “fake fish,” a Pesach dish. But all the fish in The Fishing Line is real. It was one of the only times Moshe remembers not being able to give a customer what they wanted!

Phew — That Was Close!

Once, a customer called to complain that her order hadn’t arrived. She certainly had made her order, but it mistakenly had been left in the store. Moshe ran back to get her order and discovered that after someone had turned off the freezer, they had forgotten to turn it back on. If he hadn’t come back, all the fish would have gone bad over Shabbos. Not only that, but it was the Shabbos before the Nine Days! Can you imagine all of the fish store’s fish spoiling right before the Nine Days?

After all the shopping is done — sit back, relax and enjoy the special day called Shabbos

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Jr., Issue 898)