Mishpacha Magazine has a feature called 10 Questions, where they ask a person ten questions about things they seem to have some sort of expertise in. It could be questions relating to a profession, a social issue or just a cultural phenomenon. This week, Mishpacha highlighted a gas station owner who sells a pareve chulent at his gas station on Thursday night.
I wasn't impressed with the interview, which as always is the fault of the reporter. These would be my questions:
1)There are certain business that we are used to hearing Frum people being involved with (jewlery, real estate are just two examples), how did you decide to buy a gas station?
2)Wow! A Chassidishe guy owns a gas station on a major thoroughfare in the county that is closed on Shabbos. Did you find that it took longer then expected (based on market research of other gas stations in similar neighborhoods) being closed on one of the busiest shopping/outings days in the non Frum world?
3)When setting up the convenience store did you always plan to make it a heimishe place with kosher food, kosher reading material and cds?
4)Did you consider, being a heimishe place, not selling lottery tickets or cigarettes?
5)The big news about your gas station is your Thursday night chulent. Do you have a hechsher?
6)Could your lack of hechsher, plus popularity, chip away at the kashrus system we have in place, that in order to sell food and be taken seriously, one needs to have an outside agency or Rav supervising the kashrus-one who does not have a financial stake in the selling of the food?
7)Do you have to follow any of the guidelines of the board of health? Do they inspect your facility, or the facilities where you prepare this food?
8)You claim to have been the first to have chulent on Thursday night and all others followed you. Does your Town not have take out food stores , so you filled a need that was just not there before you started serving and selling your meatless chulent?
9) Do you see yourself branching out to more gas stations?
10)Do you see yourself branching out into more "Thursday night fare,' and if you expanded your menu, would you feel any responsibility to get a hechsher?
4 comments:
I'M the anti-Chosid??????
As much as all comments are appreciated, this one makes no sense to me. There is nothing anti-chassidishe in the questions asked, in fact, the stores he is undercutting by having no hechsher or board of health restrictions are in fact Chasiddishe. So he is the anti-chasid!
i think he is mainly trying to sell gas and things like homemade cholent are an attraction to get people to gas from him rather than from the competition.
I once heard a broadcast on NPR where a gas station owner gave the following rule. You can't make money on the gas alone and you can't make money on the convenience store alone. Together, it becomes a viable business. He isn't trying to compete with the neighborhood food stores.
Either way he is purveying food (enough to need 8 twenty quart crockpots)without a hechsher and likely without any oversight from the board of health
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