The Jewish Food Festival Closes to Rave Reviews

by tbinh_admin | Jul 25, 2022 | Food Festival

Thank You to All Our loyal Jewish Food Festival Patrons

The NH Jewish Food Festival is in the books! More than 275 orders were distributed through a curbside pick-up system over what was the hottest weekend of the summer so far. Inside the TBI social hall, the process of sorting, picking, checking, and bagging orders worked seamlessly. Outside on the driveway, cars lined up to wait as orders were brought out by TBI greeters. There was a gleam of anticipation and a sense of excitement as the bags of blintzes, deli meats, rugelach, etc., were passed through the open car windows. Before driving away, many people expressed their appreciation for the opportunity to finally enjoy the foods they had waited weeks to eat. And it didn't take long for the phone in the temple to ring, or email requests sent, asking if there was more of anything to purchase, which sadly there was not. Also within hours of pickups, there were email messages like these:

I wanted to tell you that we loved the food we bought through the Jewish Food Festival! My husband and I shared it with our good friend who is Jewish and lived in NYC for a lot of her life. Again everything was excellent but she especially loved the Matzo Ball soup (excellent broth), the Knishes and Rugelach were some of the best she has had (she said forget about Zabars now). Thank you for this fundraiser and for all of the hard work that went into making this delicious food.

I picked up my order today. Everything so far is fabulous. The Chopped Liver is sublime, on a stick of celery with a smidge of salt.
Please, if there is any leftover Chopped Liver I will buy it, call me. This is for such a great cause, great organization and great community. Thank you so much to all the shoppers, chefs, helpers, drivers, office management, computer techs, packagers and parking lot attendants. All good works!

Love the drive-thru! Great rugelach! You have done a wonderful job! Thanks!

Our freezers and refrigerators are now empty - until next year. Thanks for making this another fabulous Jewish Food Festival!

 

The Sunday Pickup Crew - Strudel Anyone?

The 2022 New Hampshire Jewish Food Festival – The Prelimanary Results Are Astounding!

by tbinh_admin | Jun 27, 2022 | Food Festival

As you are reading this the 2022 NH Jewish Food Festival will have drawn to a close, but as I am writing, we are still getting orders and wrapping up the pick-up plans. This year was quite the rollercoaster ride. Early sales were steady, but we didn’t experience the initial surge we saw in 2022. The team began laying contingency plans of what we would do if we fell short of our planned sales goal. There was still one chip to be played and none knew the impact of our 10-minute segment on WMUR’s Chronicle. Never in our wildest dreams did we think it would have the impact that we felt after it aired. The first thing that happened was our website crashed from all the traffic. Then we saw a number of items quickly hit critical stock levels. We quickly turned from focusing on how to sell more to how to make more and which products were actually impacted. The cooking team leaders, Sue Needleman and Rhoda goodman quickly sprang into action and identified products and cooking team members to deal with some of the quickly moving items. Barbara Katz adjusted inventories based on these additional quantities and the sales kept rolling. Although we do not have final sales figures it looks like we will have sales that are 12-15% more than last year. Given the present state of the economy, this is a testament to the quality of foods produced and the efforts of the marketing team.

The temple freezers are overflowing awaiting the end of July pick-up process to complete the 2022 Food Festival efforts. There are dozens of people that are deserving of credit for this great success:

• The cooking team leaders, Sue Needleman and Rhoda Goodman who spent tireless hours on the recipes, recruiting, planning and participating in most, if not all, product cooking and baking efforts
• All those who participated in the cooking process and produced hundreds of knishes, over a thousand blintzes, 100 lbs. of rugelach, and 10’s of dozens of other products. You are too many to recognize here, but you know who you are.
• Marsha Ostroff , Karen Rines, Lori Rietsma, Sue Needleman, Rhoda Goodman, Karen Lukeman, Lyn Wulfson, and Jane Bogursky who individually and single-handedly made all of the challahs, chopped liver, hamantaschen, kugels, matzah ball soup, Israeli salad, and chopped herring respectively.
• Barbara Katz who wore many hats including webmaster, marketing chief, and cooking team participant.

The last phase will be completed on July 22–24 when the orders are picked up. Karen and Joe Lukeman will ensure that that process goes smoothly building on the success of last year’s efforts with the help of a new database management program that was conceived and developed by Eytan Wulfson.

The 2022 Food Festival will go into the record books, at least until 2023 when the team will try to beat its own numbers. I think they will need a few more freezers and to start the cooking tomorrow to achieve that goal.

Stu Needleman, Food Festival Committee Chair