A A1111.1111115•11111111111•1800...-1.1 4, BUSINESS Gold Medal Insurance Property & Liability Programs • Health Care • Retail Stores • Eating & Drinking Establishments • Real Estate Owners • Automotive Industry • Communication Industiy • Financial Institutions • Lodging Places • Captive Insurance • Specialty Contractors • Manufacturers • Food Processing • Wholesale Distributors • Drug Stores Metal Workers Pro-grams Heavily Discounted, Flexible Payments . . Ftf Howard M. Dubin Insurance Agency Corporation 260 Brown Suite 300 P.O. Box 12227 Birmingham, Michigan 48012-0227 (313) 258-2898 Can Kosher Diners Survive? SUSAN WEINGARDEN Special to The Jewish News A EVERYTHING SALE 75% OFF Including our famous backroom dresses All sales final Featuring .. . Fashion with a direction cuyo Crosswinds Mall • Orchard Lake Rd. at Lone Plne • 851-1260 Fri. 10-8, Sat. 10-5, Sun. 12-5 ON PENSION ADMINISTRATION COSTS CALL FOR DETAILS MAURICE A. BETMAN, PENSION ACTUARY Member, The American Society of Pension Actuaries COMPREHENSIVE FINANCIAL PLANNING CORP, (313) 3577772 56 Angelis Banks eats lunch at the empty Cafe Katan in Oak Park. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1988 fter 23 years in the deli business, Morris Goodman — former partner of Lou's Deli — decid- ed to try his hand in the kosher restaurant business. He wanted to be homer Shabbat. So he opened Sara's, the state's only kosher deli. It shares its kosher status with Sperber's Cafeteria at the Maple/Drake Jewish Com- munity Center and Cafe Katan, a small pizza parlor attached to Mertz's bakery in Oak Park. Sara's — like the two other kosher eateries in metropolitan Detroit — is fac- ing a dilemma. Goodman says the restaurant is losing money. Now he is considering closing the deli when the shopping center he now oc- cupies at 10 Mile Road and Coolidge is knocked down to make way for a larger shopp- ing center. Rent, Goodman presumes, would skyrocket beyond his limits in the new center. If business would increase, he says, he would find another location to put his deli. Neither Mertz's Cafe Katan nor Sperber's small restaurant at the JCC have reaped profits, leaving restauranteers and patrons wondering why kosher eateries can't make '' it in Detroit. Kosher delis survive in larger cities — New York, Los -'Angeles and Toronto. And some cities of similar Jewish populations also support a few kosher eaterAps. Cleveland has four koilier restaurants — one Chinese style. Baltimore, with a population of about 92,000 Jews, has five kosher restaurants.. Pittsburgh, with an estimted 45,000-person Jewish community, supports four. "There is not a market here;' says Henry Sperber, of Sperber's Kosher Catering. "It's a very risky thing." Leo Mertz, of Mertz's bakery adds, "There is not a large enough community here. The Orthodox are not accustomed to going out to restaurants. It takes a while for new habits to form." Sperber says he does not generate a profit from his restaurant at the Jewish 'Center. "It is a convenience for the community. "Lunch business at the center is excellent but not enough to keep a restaurant running?' He relies on his catering business to pay bills. Sperber may someday open the JCC restaurant for dinner. While most of his patrons are Orthodox, Mertz says he also attracts walk-in business from his bakery. "If I were los- ing money I couldn't stay in business." Goodman says there has to be a commitment from the community for a kosher restaurant to be successful. While the dinner business at Sara's is good, he says it is not enough to pay the bills. "People see lines at dinner and they think we are mak- ing money;' he says. "Our lunch business and after- noons are slow?' Food costs for kosher restaurants are higher than non-kosher restaurants. "Kosher meat is twice as ex pensive as non-kosher meat;' Goodman explains. High costs are attributed to the low demand for kosher products, and the special process in which cows are slaughtered. "We are not losing money because we are doing something wrong," Goodman says. "Our restaurant is run very professionally. Our help is friendly, the service is quick and the food is good. We have over two hundred items on the menu." Goodman says his business is 75 percent Orthodox. Esther Ryba, a steady customer from Oak Park, says she would be very disap- pointed if it closed. "There has never been a place for us to go out to eat ex- cept synagogue dinners," she explains. "My husband used to come home for lunch but now he can take clients to Sara's." Frequent customer Hyman Beale, a retired Orthodox Jew, says his community should be able to support a kosher restaurant. "Many of the Orthodox youth are professionals and financially able to support it," he says. "This restaurant pro- vides a service and it is exact- ly what we need."