Kalman Emanuel is the owner of Country K in Tannersville New York. The grocery store also has a dairy restaurant and a bed-and-breakfast on-site called Country Suites.

1. What’s Country K’s best-selling item?

Marshmallows. We sell a crazy amount. Also tons of graham crackers and chocolate — gotta make those s’mores! — and ice cream hot dogs basically the big summer foods.

2. Why did you open Country K?

My family started coming to Tannersville from Montreal where we live when I was five — we’d come for weekends and sometimes a bit longer. When I was 12 we finally took a place for the summer and we’ve been coming ever since. Tannersville is a unique summer destination: It’s in the Catskills but not what the rest of us call the Catskills — it’s an hour away from any other Jewish store or community. Tannersville isn’t the crazy-happening overly busy loud part of the mountains it’s more relaxing and very chilled. We’re five miles from Hunter Mountain a popular ski resort and the area is gorgeous the air fresh as can be. There was a kosher grocery in town but it closed down a few years ago so I decided to open Country K. I’ve always been the entrepreneur type — I started a bike-fixing business when I was nine that built up pretty big here in Montreal. I was the guy selling drinks in yeshivah that kind of thing and I thought this would be an interesting challenge. And there are more than 200 families in Tannersville in the summer so we really needed it.

3.What’s your restaurant’s most popular item? Most unusual?

Pizza of course is the most popular. We used to heat frozen Amnon’s pizzas but last year we upgraded we started making our own and got incredible reviews. I have a chef from Montreal coming this year she’s making poutine — that’s a Montreal special French fries with gravy and cheese — and different style pizzas. As for most unusual we have one customer who always orders tofu gluten-free pizza with apple blintzes and spinach knishes on the side. He’s very particular about it.

4. Who’s your clientele?

The frum summer community here goes back over 100 years. Many famous rabbanim and rebbes — Rav Joseph Breuer the Satmar Rebbe Rav Shimon Schwab — made Tannersville their getaway and breather. Anshei HaSharon which was the only shul until about ten years ago was originally mostly people from Washington Heights’s yekkish community but today Tannersville has grown to a large mix of chassidim Chabad and every stripe of Jew — with a shul or beis medrash for each one from yekkes to Lubavitch to Satmar to the Lakewood crowd and all of the tourists and campers and travelers. At Country Suites we get a lot of couples coming for weekend getaways families for the week or passing through. The atmosphere when a yeshivah takes the whole place for a weekend is incredible — lots of singing kumzitzen and of course cholent.

5.Who’s your staff?

We’re very family oriented — my sister-in-law in Eretz Yisrael is my bookkeeper and my sisters and brothers-in-law come for the summer with their families one from Cincinnati and the other from Montreal. The little kids my younger siblings and nieces and nephews help bag groceries and carry them to the cars — it’s very cute! Most of my staff are bochurim who are looking for something to do in the summer and they do everything here from unloading deliveries to stocking the shelves to helping in the kitchen to waitering in the restaurant to setting up the eiruv on Country Suites grounds before Shabbos to mowing the lawn to making deliveries. They’ve become part of the Country K family and the Tannersville community. It’s really special.

6.When do you start preparing for the summer?

I do small things throughout the year but the major busy times start around Pesach. This is really a summer job for me. During the year I’m a rebbi for special-needs kids in Yeshiva Gedola of Montreal and I work for MK — Canada’s kosher certifier. I do public relations for them in the afternoon. Country K is only a necessity for the summer months because Tannersville is one of those communities that’s frum two months a year. I rent the Country K building from the owner — he runs a bar there during the year for skiers who come to town.

7.What’s the toughest part of running a summer business?

Deciding how much to carry. That first year we ordered way too much. It’s one of the challenges of a summer business — you want to carry everything for those two months but you don’t want leftovers at the end. We learned a lot that first summer — how much to carry when to slow down the ordering which suppliers are willing to come up that sort of thing.

8.What’s the best part of running a summer business?

The atmosphere. Country K is very family oriented and it’s really become a part of the town culture. Here’s an example: I once said something in the store about something tasting like charoises I pronounced it like a chassidish Yiddish and the word took off! I don’t know how it became the Country K code word suddenly everyone in town was saying it and somehow it became a thing. Our Tannersville group chat is called Charoises. I just bought Greene Mountain View Inn a few blocks away. It’s an upper-scale bed-and-breakfast that I’ll be opening this summer and the legal name is Charoises. Yes I’ll be paying my taxes under the name Charoises.

9.Has Country K had any memorable shoppers or diners?

Harav Ephraim Wachsman came to the store one day so that was an honor. Some groups are memorable too. Last summer Oorah called last-minute Girl Zone is on its way with 150 girls. We had to quickly set up a full lunch for them — pizza fries onion rings and an array of salads on tables inside and outside. Oorah was so happy with the setup and the food they sent all their other divisions over throughout the summer. Another time we had ten minutes’ warning that a girls’ camp with 100 girls was stopping in to make their division head a surprise birthday party. We played Shloime Gertner’s “Happy Birthday” song on our speaker system when they walked in they had a fantastic time.

10. What about events?

We hosted two Nachamu events last summer: on Motzaei Shabbos we had a massive kumzitz with the famous DJ Yossi — there were tons of kids and the energy was incredible! The next day someone sponsored free supper for everyone and Avi Piamenta came to perform. We also once hosted a massive breakfast event for the public with New York senator George Amedore last summer. He was running for election and wanted to get some votes. He got 60 votes from Country K and he won by 13 so we like to say he won by Country K. (Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 667)