New York…It is hard to believe that the last two years were one of the busiest periods for new kosher restaurant launches. Elan Kornblum, "The Restaurant Guy" and President, Great Kosher Restaurants Media Group, said that the kosher restaurant business was set to “explode” prior to Covid. “Many new restaurants were set to open when Covid hit. What we are seeing now is that all those restaurants that had to delay their launches were now opening.” He continued: “Many of these have been in the works for months, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested and they are now powering through to make it to the other side of this pandemic.”
In his review of 2020-21, Kornblum lists a dozen new restaurants in Manhattan alone, Brooklyn with 18, Queens and the Five Towns with 18, 8 each in North Jersey and Southern California, 20 in Florida and others in Riverdale, Nyack, Monsey, the Catskills, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rochester, South Jersey, Baltimore, Minnesota (Mall of America), and Las Vegas. While a record number of new restaurants opened, less than two handful closed their doors during Covid.
