What’s behind a brand? Who is behind a brand? We often think of brands, especially well-known ones, as corporate identities—a name, nothing more.
But it can be much, much more.
Brands have stories behind them. Case in point: Klein’s Naturals, an industry staple behind popular dried fruits, nuts, chocolate, candies and other food items.
Klein’s Naturals was started by a couple (the Klein’s, naturally). Working from the basement of their Boro Park home, they began by roasting nuts in their home for a single store. As the demand increased and the client list grew, so did the company, eventually moving to a large manufacturing facility in Brooklyn.
Hershel Klein, who began his career in the electric supply business, applied some innovative business concepts to expand the company, including introducing the idea of selling bulk products to stores for private labels.
I spoke to Hershel about the growth of the company, his daily schedule, and the ins-and-outs of a family-run business—as well as a unique connection to Tu BiShvat. Enjoy!
—Nesanel
I was born in Shaarei Tzedek Hospital in Yerushalayim in 1948. My parents were both born in Israel. When I was growing up, my father worked in the post office.
“We are Belzer chasidim and I went to Belzer yeshivos. In fact, Rav Aharon of Belz was my uncle, and I remember him. My mother and the old Belzer Rebbetzin, Rebbetzin Chana, were sisters. My mother and her father came to Eretz Yisrael before the war and were later joined by the Belzer Rebbe and his rebbetzin, her sister.
“On my father’s side, we are direct descendants from the Shelah Hakadosh.
“As a teenager, I was not entrepreneurial. I was a regular bachur. I got married when I was 20. My wife’s family comes from Nyírtass in Hungary. She grew up in a family that was connected with Satmar and lived in Boro Park. We got married in America and settled in Boro Park.
“For parnasah, I started out as an electrician. I opened Williamsboro Electric Supply together with a partner; we sold supplies for electricians. This was around 40 years ago, and I worked in that business for 12 years. At our peak, we had 25 employees. In the 1980s, the economy declined and people stopped building, so our business slowed down and we eventually had to close. It was a very tough time, and I don’t like to remember the details, but Hashem gave me the kochos to get through it.
“While our company was slowing down, my wife had decided she would do something small on the side. Someone told my son Yeedle, who had just left kollel, to look into the nuts and dried fruit business as no one was offering them in high quality to the frum world. My wife and our son started this business in our basement. Our basement was small, probably 20 x 60, and half of it was designated for the business.
“When my company finally closed, I joined my wife and son in their dried fruit business. I was around 45 years old at the time. Their company had only been in existence for about a year, but it already had a few employees. At the time, my wife was focused on selling packages of nuts and dried fruits under the Klein’s Naturals brand. I had the idea to begin selling products in bulk to supermarkets so that they could put their own brand label on it. It was well received, and it enabled us to sell in large quantities.
“My wife tasted every product to ensure it was up to her standards. It needed to be the highest quality for her to sell it. In the beginning, we went around to supermarkets and offered to sell them as little as one container so they could try it out. We wanted the supermarkets to recognize the quality of our products.
“At one point, we weren’t happy with the quality of some of the roasted nuts, so we decided to do some of it ourselves. We invested in a small french fry roaster, like one of those deep fryers you see in every pizza store, and we started frying every week until we got it right. We kept asking our customers how they liked it until we perfected the recipe. There are two types of roasting: dry and with oil. Interestingly, in Eretz Yisrael most nuts are dry roasted, whereas in America most are oil roasted.
“We expanded into the other half of the basement, but we still didn’t have an official office. Today we are in a large warehouse and manufacture our own products, but for the first few years, we operated completely out of our home. We once ordered cranberries in bulk from Ocean Spray. The delivery man came with a 40-foot trailer full of cranberries, but when he pulled up to our house, he was confused because he thought he was delivering to a company. We lived on 54th Street and 12th Avenue in Boro Park. When the driver initially saw the address for the delivery, he figured it had to mean a Manhattan address because there was no way that the order was for a residential address. He only came to our home after going to Manhattan and not finding anywhere to drop it off. He told me it took him an entire day to get to us because the truck was so large and hard to maneuver through all the small streets. We ordered so much, I had to rent the garage across the street because we couldn’t fit it all in the basement.
“We ordered our produce from all over the world. After we started becoming successful with the nuts and dried fruits, and later chocolates, our customers asked for candies as well, so we branched into that. When you’re in this industry, you find out the best places to get the produce by trial and error. I went to trade shows to source different candies and products I could bring to the kosher world.
“My wife and I worked together, but on two different aspects of the brand. I dealt with the packaging and outside sales, while she worked on, among other things, package design, sourcing new products and product testing.
“Besides selling our product in bulk to stores, one of the first things I helped bring to market was the concept of putting our products into plastic containers that go on the shelf. While it’s now commonplace to see tubs of plastic containers on supermarket shelves, it wasn’t always that way.
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