JULY 27 • 2023 | 45

More About 
the Lettuce 

When someone buys lettuce 
from Pure Vegetables, they can 
be assured they won’t discov-
er any creepy-crawlies hiding 
in their salad. That’s thanks to 
Yosef Beller, 31, who started the 
company that triple washes and 
checks lettuce, which is sold 
exclusively out of Lincoln Rx in 
Oak Park. 
Beller had long 
been involved in 
hashgacha (rab-
binic supervision 
of designating 
food kosher) and 
worked in restau-
rant kitchens. One 
of his required 
tasks was checking 
vegetables and 
removing bugs, 
which are not 
kosher. 
“I realized that it was easy to 
miss, to be careless. I decided if 
I was going to do it, I should do 
it right and I took it on almost as 
a shlichus [mission],” said Beller, 
who was born in Israel and 
moved to Oak Park in 2018 with 
his wife, Bracha, and two kids. 
In March 2022, Beller opened 
his business, utilizing a specially 
built kitchen. He buys romaine 
lettuce heads wholesale and 
then begins his labor-intensive 
cleaning routine. 
According to Beller, there are 
two parts to the process: clean-
ing and checking. He discards 
the first layer of dirty lettuce 
and then separates each lettuce 
leaf, which is washed under the 
faucet — twice. Next, the leaves 
soak in a bucket of water mixed 
with Seventh Generation soap 
for three minutes. After each 
lettuce is carefully removed, the 
water from the bucket is poured 
over a thrip cloth. 
“If there are bugs on the 
cloth, we know there are still 
bugs in the lettuce and repeat 

the process. If there are no 
bugs in the water, the lettuce is 
clean,” said Beller. 
The lettuce is vacuum packed 
and can stay fresh up to two 
weeks.
Beller has found thrips, mites 
and aphids while washing. 
“In my experience, there’s no 
such thing as no bugs in let-
tuce — they’re leafy, they grow 
in the ground and bugs clearly 
love it,” Beller said. 
He does not use 
organic lettuce 
because there are 
too many bugs. 
Incredibly, this 
intense cleaning 
process seems to 
make the lettuce 
extra crisp and 
crunchy. 
“I’m always get-
ting compliments 
on how delicious, 
fresh and crunchy 
the lettuce is. It’s good stuff!” 
he said. “And people love the 
fact that it’s really bug-free. One 
guy told me he always checks 
his lettuce for bugs, even if the 
package says ‘triple checked’ 
and he’s always still found 
bugs. But he told me, ‘I don’t 
know how you’re doing it, but 
you really did it — I checked 
your lettuce and there were no 
bugs.’”
Beller is busy with his lettuce 
business all year-round and 
hires helpers to help him keep 
up with the demand. He is hop-
ing to expand in the future. 
Romaine lettuce bags are 
sold daily, and on Thursday and 
Friday at Lincoln Rx, a variety 
of freshly prepared salads join 
them. There’s an option of Royal 
Salad (cabbage), Crunch (which 
has vegetables and crackers) 
and Tropical Salad (fruit). Bags 
of lettuce cost $10.99 each and 
the salads cost $22.99. 

For more information, email 
purevegetables1@gmail.com.

munity,
” said Sam, who is 
Chaldean. “They’re good 
people. I was invited to many 
Jewish weddings, bar mitz-
vahs, bat mitzvahs … and 
they came to our weddings 
and baptisms, everything. 
When my mother died, some 
of my Jewish customers got 
together and planted a tree 
in Israel in her and my dad’s 
name. My customers were 
like my family.
”
The grandfather of nine 
said he made some great 
memories in his family-run 
store and often brought in his 
three kids to help out while 
they were growing up. 
“It’s one of the oldest 
independent drugstores in 
Michigan. We knew every-
one by name,
” said Sam, who 
retired in 2019 after 31 years. 

THE PHARMACY
Pharmacist Marwan Isa, 
36, of West Bloomfield, also 
Chaldean, started working at 
Lincoln Drugs in 2012 and, 
in 2018, he became the man-
ager. Later that same year, 
Alan sold Lincoln Drugs to 
Rite Aid across the street, on 
Coolidge Highway. 
“By then I had a relation-
ship with the customers, and 
I saw how disappointed they 
all were, and I decided to do 
something,
” said Marwan, 
who six months later re- 
established a new pharmacy 
in the store. “Rite Aid had 
already acquired the name 
Lincoln Drugs, so I had to 
change the name slightly.
”
That’s when it official-
ly became Lincoln Rx 
Pharmacy. 
Marwan works 10 hours a 
day, six days a week and said 
he enjoys every minute. “It’s 
an icon in the city … a real 
mom-and-pop store. We’re 
so different from the big 

corporate pharmacies. When 
a customer has trouble with 
their insurance and needs 
their medication, we just give 
it to them, put it on the store 
charge and figure out the 
details later,
” Marwan said. 
They’ve also offered free 
delivery since long before 
COVID. “We have a unique 
relationship with the com-
munity. They’re phenomenal 
and supportive. We really 
consider them our family.
”

NEW HANDS
In October 2021, when 
Yedidya “Didi” Kleiner, 36, 
picked up a prescription 
from the pharmacy, Marwan 
mentioned there was an 
opportunity to acquire the 
liquor store. 
“It dawned on me that it 
could be a good platform 
with a lot of potential growth 
for our Detroit community,
” 
said Didi, a father of four 
who works primarily in 
real estate investments and 
moved to Southfield with his 
wife, Shani, 10 years ago. 
His friend Mendel Poss, 
34, had recently shared that 
he was looking for a new 
business opportunity. 
“It happened around the 
same time, so we made the 
shidduch,
” Didi said. He 
bought the store in May 2022 
and Mendel has been man-
aging the store ever since. 
Even under new own-
ership, the store has the 
same warm and personal 
feel it’s always had. It’s still 
a place everyone seems to 
know everyone else, where 
the customers notice and 
ask after employees when 
they’re absent. The Chaldean 
employees love surprising 
the Jewish customers with a 
hearty “Good Shabbos!” on 
Friday afternoons. 

continued on page 46

Triple-washed 
romaine lettuce

