Streit’s shuttering matzah plant after 90 years
Lower East Side bakery will shut down after Passover festival because equipment is too old to be repaired
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NEW YORK — Streit’s said it will close the company’s 90-year-old matzah factory on New York’s Lower East Side.
Aron Streit, Inc., a family-owned business, said it will leave the facility at 148-154 Rivington St. following the Passover baking season in April.
Matzah is unleavened, cracker-like bread that is a central theme of Passover and the traditional Seder night feast held on the first night of the week-long festival.
“The economics just finally caught up with us,” said Alan Adler, the owner of the factory and the Streit’s matzah store. “It was very sad, a very hard decision to make.”
Adler is the great-grandson of Aron Streit, who started a bakery at a different Lower East Side location before opening the Rivingston Street factory nearby in 1925. Streit’s now produces approximately 40 percent of the matzah consumed in the United States, according to The Associated Press.
The company will move its offices to its other facility in New Jersey that bakes macaroons and other products, Adler said. It hopes to fetch $25 million for the six-story building, AP reported.
“Right now everything is on the table, we’re looking at all our options,” Adler said.
Adler told DNAinfo that the company cannot find anyone to repair its equipment, which was built in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.