JNS
The food truck aims to serve “Jewish-adjacent” customers, Shani Seidman, chief marketing officer of the Manischewitz parent company, told JNS.
Shani Seidman was inspired when she saw a social media posting, in which a user admitted unabashedly to a desire to follow ice cream trucks around even during the winter. The chief marketing officer of Kayco, the Manischewitz parent company, sent a note to the latter’s CEO.
“We need to make a matzah ball soup truck,” she said. The Manischewitz CEO responded affirmatively.
“And that is how the idea started,” Seidman told JNS.
Manischewitz’s “deli on wheels” was scheduled to being serving patrons across New York and New Jersey on March 27, with a scheduled stop at a ShopRite in Brooklyn on Thursday, one planned in Plainview, N.Y., on Friday and another in Rochelle Park, N.J., on Monday.
The food truck sells the 130-year-old kosher brand’s staples, including rugelach, knishes, macaroons and matzah ball soup, and Seidman told JNS that it is intended to connect with both Jews and a wider consumer base in New York City.
“The whole idea of our company’s rebrand is to welcome anyone to our table who wants to join and expand beyond just the Jewish community,” she said.
“When we were doing it, we were thinking about our target audience. We want people who think of themselves as Jewish-adjacent, who know about Jewish culture but aren’t necessarily Jewish themselves, to explore different cultures,” she said.
“This is a great access point for Jewish culture through food,” she added.
There are plans for the deli on wheels, which will close over Passover, to adjust its offerings seasonally, including serving matzah ball soup in the winter and hot dogs in the summer, according to Seidman.
“There’s no other food truck that’s a deli on wheels serving Jewish food,” she said. “When people see it, their faces light up. Our food is all about bringing people joy, and now we’re bringing it to the streets.”
Talia Rose Sabag, marketing manager at Kayco, told JNS that the food truck aims to recreate vintage deli experiences.
“In the 1920s and 1940s, there were over 2,000 delis in New York City,” Sabag said. “They were ubiquitous, and now we are basically down to about 25 or so remaining ‘iconic’ ones like Second Avenue Deli or Katz’s Deli.”
Once a staple of New York City street food, delis have largely been replaced by other options, like falafel and shawarma carts, even among kosher consumers, according to Sabag.
“With this truck, we are celebrating what it means to be a classic deli,” she told JNS. “In that bygone era of New York, anyone after a Broadway show would have stopped at a stage door deli and gotten a fantastic bowl of chicken noodle soup.”
“Now we will be here vending the most delicious classic New York staples for anyone who is looking to take a bite of a real knish,” she said. “The kind that’s more or less disappeared from the streets of New York.”
Sabag told JNS that the public can track the truck’s location on Instagram and encouraged followers to comment with favorite Manischewitz foods that they’d like to see the truck offer next.
“The way that you would request a song from a DJ, if there is a greatest deli hit you want to see served, let us know,” she said.
“We love interacting with our fans and we love interacting with the people who will actually be out in the street coming to eat our food on a day to day basis,” she said.
