As 2024 was coming to a close, a series of emails starting hitting the inboxes of local Jews. Coming from a wide spectrum of Orthodox rabbis and congregations, the emails outlined the value of kosher institutions to an Orthodox community and implored readers to support local food service providers.
If a specific event precipitated the call to action he doesn’t know, but Rabbi Yaakov Zions of the Scroll-K, the leading local kosher supervising agency, wasn’t surprised. From his work, he knows firsthand of the struggles the kosher food industry is facing. Consumers need lower prices, but when he speaks to proprietors, they say their prices are already at the lowest they can be.
Denver has seen a large number of restaurant closures in the past two months, among them successful long-standing ones. According to a recent article in the Denver Post, Denver has seen a 22% decline in restaurants since 2021.
Inflation, rent increases, minimum wage and other government regulations are among the reasons cited, and have squeezed an already tight industry.
For kosher food outlets, it’s an even tighter squeeze, as its market share is a fragment of Denver area consumers.
As the cost of eating out rises, it is natural that consumers react by eating more at home. And kosher consumers, says Zions, are already used to that.
“The average person doesn’t bring their meals with them to the airport or on vacation,” he says, but people who keep kosher are always thinking ahead. “Sometimes we have the luxury that there will be a place that we can eat,” but kosher-keeping Jews are used to providing for themselves. Cutting down on takeouts and restaurants doesn’t create the same burden for them.
“We’re not as reliant, or we can’t be as reliant” on kosher food outlets, he says, though he credits travelers to ski areas and conferences as positive for local kosher food outlets.
Aside from items like meat and cheese, kosher consumers don’t pay extra for kosher products from a grocery store; the kosher certification is shared equally among all consumers. “But when it comes to kosher restaurants, the kosher community does pay extra for it,” he says. That’s where every family’s budget and calculus come into play.
Observers have long wondered why Denver has fewer kosher establishments than other cities of similarly sized kosher-observant communities. Zions wonders too, and offers a variety of reasons. Proximity, for example. In some cities, observant communities are geographically concentrated. Not so in Denver.
What he doesn’t believe is a contributing factor is the cost of local kosher certification. Scroll-K, he says, earns most of its fees from certifying kosher products, the kinds one might find on a grocery shelf. Its fees for food service certification, he says, is affordable or even nominal. In one case the agency charged $100 a month for supervision, even though it entailed being on site several times a month. But the business was struggling and the Scroll K wanted to see it survive, he says.
“We see our work as a community service,” he says. “It’s not healthy to charge nothing, but we look at it as a service.”
The agency tries for flexibility within its rules of supervision. For non-meat operations, it will not necessarily require full-time supervision. “We were fine with having a non-Jew working there and just popping in every once in a while,” says Zions about a particular vegetarian establishment.
Recent years have seen the agency certify a number of cottage businesses, in line with the Colorado Cottage Foods Act that allows limited food production sold without state licensing, including breads and other baked goods. Cottage businesses typically refer to businesses operating out of one’s home or a commissary kitchen. A cottage food business also produces fewer quantities and can be limited to specific type of food items that are deemed at a lower health risk for spoilage.
Such a business has lower overhead costs, but also requires flexibility on the part of the agency, as it cannot pop in unannounced as it would with a formal establishment.
Before giving its certification to such a business, the agency will inspect the premises it uses for production, but it will not, for example, be able to inspect every delivery arriving at a person’s home. For that kind of business, “You have to have the trust factor before anything,” he says.
When asked if there is pushback from the formal kosher eateries in town, Zions says there was curiosity about the standards — and that the growth of cottage businesses is a trend he is seeing in kosher markets across the country.
There are no exclusive contracts or agreements in place with any proprietor or establishment, he says.
“If I had a way to send one message to the broader community, it is that if anybody wants to open a restaurant or has ideas, we are happy to work with them.”
© IJN 2025