During the New York City earthquake of 2024, I was on the phone with Team Manischewitz when the ground started to shake. It would be ridiculous to assume that this was less tectonic than Talmudic, thousands of bubbes spinning beneath our feet, an army of Fruma Sarahs returning in protest, as in Tevye’s dream. Right?
Well. Manischewitz is rebranding.
Customers stocking up for the Passover holiday, which begins Monday, April 22, at sundown, will notice something different at the supermarket. Their matzo box looks younger, their jars of gefilte fish refreshed. In a citrusy palette of Manischewitz orange, the old standbys have been gussied up with doodle-y illustrations and a cheerfully zaftig new font, an aesthetic that falls somewhere along the spectrum that runs from Saul Steinberg through the incidental sketches in “Talk of the Town” to the reigning style of cheeky, upstart DTC brands. Look at that matzo baker on the new box — is he wearing Converse? There’s a new website, new social campaigns, new merch. “All Bubby sees is a Matzo Ball,” the company’s Twitter posted during Monday’s eclipse.
To generations of American Jews, Manischewitz is as familiar as guilt. It has graced tables for over a century: The company was founded as a matzo bakery in 1888 in Cincinnati, made the sweet Concord grape wine for which it is widely known straight through Prohibition (thanks to a legal carve-out for sacramental booze), and had its tagline hollered on the moon. (“Man, oh, Manischewitz!” Buzz Aldrin reportedly cried, unless it was actually the less famous Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan.) For many of us, and despite subsequent iterations, the Manischewitz box has been stuck in an eternal 1988, with its stock-photography images of soups and crackers and Swiss cheese, and its listing serifed logo, delicious not in spite of its dustiness but because of it.
“When Kayco acquired Manischewitz in 2019, it was always their intention to dust this brand off, bring it back its groove,” says Shani Seidman, the chief marketing officer of Kayco, the kosher-foods manufacturer and distributor that now owns Manischewitz, along with Kedem grape juice and wine, Afikomen Passover Pastries, and Bosco syrup. The goal, she says, was to see “where in our portfolio can we connect to what’s happening currently and how we can move to mass appeal, bring maybe someone’s grandchildren back into the fold — maybe their friends that are not even Jewish.” The culturally curious — the watchers of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the new fans of Russ & Daughters — are out there. What, a macaroon they shouldn’t want? They now come in nontraditional flavors like red velvet, rocky road, and cookies and cream, and the potato-pancake mix and matzo-ball mix come with phonetic Yiddish pronunciation guides. (Manischewitz wine is a license owned by Gallo, and so it falls outside the scope of the current rebrand, though it may adopt the new look going forward.)
To reboot the image, Kayco landed on Jones Knowles Ritchie, a branding agency with offices in New York, London, and Shanghai. (It suggested some ready-for-social shortening, like “Mani’z” and even just “M’z.”) JKR has worked on plenty of huge-scale rebrands in the last several years, including a voice-y, neo-’70s Dunkin’ redo and the plumped-up logo-driven redesign of Burger King; Manischewitz represented a more niche proposition. Still, says Lisa Smith, the global executive creative director of JKR, “There is a cultural awakening to Jewish food happening right now. We just really tried to capture all of that energy into this rebrand.”
While Manischewitz sales have been growing in some observant enclaves, the company has seen flatter numbers in the broader secular and kosher-curious market — precisely what the friendlier, more contemporary new style is hoping to reverse. Can a cute new look — compare it with Magic Spoon cereal’s animated avatars or Goodles boxed vegan mac ’n’ cheese’s plush typography — bring in a more casual consumer? (“I’m not sure, just politely, if I completely like some of those comparisons,” Smith told me when I mentioned some of the DTC campaigns with their own nouveau-retro styling.) Certainly there are abundant examples of brands reaching beyond their initial target markets toward mass acceptance. “My kids love Taco Tuesday,” Seidman says. “I may not necessarily have that in my heritage, but I do it. And we just maybe want Matzo Ball Monday.”
The first Matzo Ball Monday will be in a few days, when the Seder table is set and a new box will decorate it. It might take some time before the company’s longtime fans adjust to the new design. “I got a call from my mother: ‘Where’s my matzo-ball mix?’” Seidman admits. “That’s probably what’s to be expected.”
Matthew Schneier , 2024-04-10 17:55:40
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