Yehoshua Berger is the owner of EsrogShopper.com. He’s based in Lakewood, New Jersey

In Brief:

Day job I work in health care, and I do this on the side — I take off the two weeks the season requires.

Equipment I always have on me

A diamond-dealer level magnifying loupe and a good razor blade. I just have to be careful not to take the loupe to the cardboard boxes and the blade to the esrogim in those wee hours of the night!

Tips for storing your arba minim

I don’t have anything more to offer than the basics: Don’t store them high up, where it can get hot, and refrigerate the haddassim and aravos in the plastic they come with. I take the whole “koisherkle” — the haddassim and aravos holder — off the lulav and put it into the plastic and refrigerate. There’s no need to wrap or water it.

What I do

Personal esrog shopping. You tell us your preferences and specifications, and we find it and deliver it to your door.

What that means

You fill out our questionnaire from home, either leaving the default options selected or changing the answers to your preference. We import arba minim and match from our selection to your requests. Some customers have real specifications about everything from preferred brand — Chazon Ish Lefkowitz or perhaps Teimani — to color — “I’ve always liked the mostly yellow with some green tinges look” — or without pitom; gidul, which is shape and symmetry; size — “It needs to fit in the esrog box my shver bought me” — and so on. Others just want a mehudar esrog set without specific details, and we can choose that for them.

How I got started

I always loved the whole daled minim scene. I’ve been esrog shopping ever since I can remember, first for my father, then for myself and anyone else in the family who needed. My first job was when I was 12, working eight-hour shifts in the basement of Montreal’s Judaica store, making rings and tying up lulavim for their orders. After my marriage, when I was in kollel, I ran my own retail location selling mostly to friends and locals.

My lightbulb moment

Shopping for esrogim can be stressful, because service usually isn’t part of the process, to put it mildly. I tried to make my store as inviting as possible — going around and asking customers about their preferences, helping them — but I quickly realized I’d be unable to service all of them the way they deserved. Yes, there will always be the customers who are the know-how-to-work-the-busy-store type or I-have-an-in-with-the-guy-in-the-back type, but I wanted to offer that personalized customer service on a larger scale.