Greenfield's Of Detroit
Rolls Homemade Dough

ISRA EL DIGEST

Specially compiled by The Jerusalem Post

— $1 EQUALS 2.757 NIS (shekels) - Close Price 6116/93 —

Loan Guarantees Help Debt

KIMBERLY LIFTON STAFF WRITER

randma's kosher
chicken noodle soup
in Detroit just
wouldn't be the same
without Greenfield Noodle
Co.
The local distributor for
Israel's Osem, and for
Mother's and Rokeach, has
captured its own niche in
the food industry. The noo-
dles are homemade in an
era when most companies
opt for a faster, more effi-
cient processed product.
Greenfield, a small com-
pany selling under its trade
name and private labels
throughout New York,
California and Texas, plus
Atlanta, Pittsburgh and
Cleveland, has been mak-
ing old-fashioned home-
made noodles since 1953.
Then, three brothers
named Greenfield convert-
ed a cracknel (small cookie
and biscuits) company into
a noodle business.
Today, the 40-year-old
company, which is owned
by Jack Peltz, prepares
500,000 pounds of egg noo-
dles a year. Rabbi Ernest
Greenfield, one of its
founders, still works a few
days a week at the Detroit
plant, which is closed on
every Shabbat and all

G

Jewish
holidays.
"It's a good business. We
do quite well," Rabbi
Greenfield said. Officials
declined to reveal sales fig-
ures.
Noodles are made two
ways — extruded and sheet
rolled. In today's mega
industry, the major players
like Prince extrude the
products, a process taking
about four hours and elimi-
nating the muscle of sheet
rolled noodles. Unless
rolled by hand, noodles
today aren't made the way
Greenfield's are. Even the
texture is different,
Manager Ken Michals
insists.
"Just about all noodles
are kosher," Mr. Michals
says. "People don't buy ours
because of that. They buy
our noodles because we
manufacture them in an
old-fashioned, traditional
Italian manner. We roll the
dough."
By the time a bag of
Greenfield's homemade

noodles hits
your stor-
age cabi-
net, the
product has
gone through a
minimum of 24 hours
of preparation.
What starts as 300
pounds of durum flour,
water and 60 pounds of
eggs yields 40 cases con-
taining 12 ten-ounce bags
of pasta. After the ingredi-
ents are mixed in a large
bowl, the dough is moved
slowly through a press,
which rolls it.
The dough is then cut,
and it is dried in storage
rooms with fans. This is a
weather-permitting pro-
cess, which takes longer
when it rains or snows.
Companies that extrude
noodles do not use these old
rolling and drying methods
first employed by French
emigre Antoine Zerega in
1848.
Though Greenfield opts
for fans and storage rooms
for drying instead of the
primitive roof-top methods
of its earliest facility on the
Brooklyn waterfront, it has
not gone to the modern-day
method of microwave dry-
ing. El

nDETROIT
5BUSINESS

R.J. KING SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

A

Steven Spielberg movie
`Jurassic Park,' " said Mr.
Silber, 54, vice president
of the 66-year-old Fred
Silber Co., a multi-million-
dollar firm which pro-
motes fairs, concerts and
carnivals among its 11
divisions.
"Part of this business is
just plain luck, but most of
it is due to hard work. One
way to stay ahead of com-
petitors is to out-work

French Fry Imports Rejected

McDonald's has lost the
latest round in the battle
to import a better French
fry.
Trade Minister Micha
Harish's proposal failed
in face of Agriculture
Minister Ya'acov Tsur's
determined opposition
aimed at protecting
Tapud, the sole Israeli

producer of frozen fries,
and local potato growers.
Mr. Harish announced
he would appeal the deci-
sion before the whole
cabinet as many minis-
ters left proxies and did
not participate in the
debate.
(See page 49.)

Jobless Rate 11 Percent

Unemployment figures in
Israel were revised upward
for the first quarter of the
year, from 10.6 percent to
11 percent, when seasonal-
ly adjusted under a new
method which takes into
consideration Jewish holi-
days and local work activi-
ty patterns.
Still, Israel economic
officials said, there is enor-
mous increase in the num-
ber of people entering the

job market and the even
larger growth in the num-
ber of the employed is evi-
dence of expansive eco-
nomic activity.
According to the Central
Bureau of Statistics'
updated figures for the
first quarter of the year,
35,000 people joined the
workforce, bringing the
total up to 1,921,900 peo-
ple, a 4.6 percent increase
over the previous quarter.

Koor Shares For Sale

Fred Silber Turned
'21 Into Millions

cross the street from
Dennis Silber's
office in a large
warehouse in
Ferndale is one of the
largest collections of
stuffed toys in the world,
including the reigning
favorite, Barney the
Dinosaur.
"Barney is hot right
now, especially with the
dinosaur exhibit at the
Detroit Zoo and the new

estimated. The current
The Israeli government
account measures the sta-
may use the U.S. loan
tus of Israel's trade bat-
guarantees for Israel to
ance and financial trans-
help reschedule its foreign
fers, including foreign aid
debt, instead of for their
and foreign currency
original purpose of financ-
brought into the country.
ing investment to facilitate
The need to take full
immigrant absorption,
advantage of the loan
Treasury officials said.
guarantees was one of the
Israel Finance Ministry
major items discussed at
Director-General Aharon
the cabinet meeting, which
Fogel said this decision
would be based on whether concentrated on reviewing
the state of the economy
the current account deficit
and on economic assess-
continued to be significant-
merits for the future.
ly lower than previously

them. I've always believed
that with hard work comes
good fortune."
To be sure, Mr. Silber's
father, Fred, started the
company in 1927 when he
invested $21 — his life
savings at the time — in a
delivery truck, aspirin and
matches. Fortune, appar-
ently, came along for the
ride.
"I started out driving

SILBER page 34

The Israel Treasury will
put up for sale $75 million
worth of Koor shares to
institutional investors out-
side of the stock market.
The Treasury's accoun-
tant general directed Koor
Industries to convert a por-
tion of a Koor bond worth
$120 million into 307,814
regular shares valued at
about $75 million. This
amounts to 2.5 percent of

the company's total shares.
The government purchased
the Koor bond at $50 mil-
lion as part of the compa-
ny's recovery program.
According to the
Treasury spokesman, since
Koor has liquidated its
debts under the recovery
program, the government's
participation is not needed
anymore to reassure
debtors.

Indexes Continue To Climb

The buying wave contin-
ued in Tel Aviv trading
June 16 as the two-sided
index rose by 0.9 percent,
after climbing by 1.4 per-
cent at midday.
Major interest, however,
was for the Karam market
which rose by 3.7 percent
and the Parallel list which
jumped by 4.2 percent. A

total of 735 securities rose
against 41 declines, of
which 19 were on the two-
sided.
The relatively high
turnover showed that the
public is returning quietly
to the market as mutual
funds reported a small
influx of money.

