Stress-free kosher shopping

IF you dread facing another Friday afternoon battling traffic and never-ending checkout lines to purchase your Shabbat groceries, then a business launching next week may ease your worries. 

Leibler Yavneh College graduate Aaron Schmidt, inspired by watching his mother fret on a Friday afternoon to prepare everything in time for Shabbat, has established an online kosher food delivery service, which will bring orders from Glick’s, Haymisha, Lichtenstein’s, Yumi’s, Eshel, Daneli’s and Bake My Day to your doorstep.

“I just see my mother run around every single Friday to five different stores to pick up bits and pieces from each one. Parking is terrible; the stores are packed,” the 27-year-old entrepreneur told The AJN.

“So I thought what’s the point in all these people, who all live next to each other, running down to 10 stores that are all next to each other, and lining up, when one person can go pick up and drop it all off.”

With a click of a button and for a small fee, dips, salads, soups, cooked food and desserts can be ordered and delivered to the customer’s door by 4pm Friday, packaged in special cooler bags to keep the produce fresh.

Schmidt explained, “We’re saying before 4pm but we’ll be adjusting as we go. If they’re at home then they select from two three-hour periods, but if it’s cooler bags then it will be anywhere from 10am to 4pm.”

He added, “at the moment we’re not really doing raw foods so people shouldn’t be too concerned about getting this stuff closer to Shabbos. Once we start expanding into raw meat and fish, then we will think about doing Thursday deliveries. But everything we’re going to be doing at the moment is baked goods, cooked schnitzel and all the kind of stuff that doesn’t need too much prep.”

The website has already garnered a response from the community, accumulating more than 500 visits before the delivery service has been launched.

“The response has been really great. We’ve reached about four and a half thousand through the Facebook page, which has about 350 likes, and more than 500 visits to the website,” enthused Schmidt.

With an easy to navigate website, the only thing left to do is place an order before 11am on Thursday.

For more information or to place an order, visit www.koshercart.com.au.

AJN STAFF

Founder of Kosher Cart Aaron Schmidt. Photo: Peter Haskin