Kosher Restaurants
The Problem
In most communities, kosher restaurants are few and far between. Leverage a largely captive clientele (i.e., who only eat kosher food), they have a limited incentive to compete in the broader marketplace, either on service or food variety. Moreover, there is a non-trivial expense in “going kosher”, including opportunity costs related to opening days and times1 and menu choices2 and explicit costs of paying a kosher supervisor.
The Goal
The goal of this post is to raise the quantity and quality of kosher establishments worldwide.
The Proposal
Select a restaurant rating system (such as Michelin or TripAdvisor) and make a public offer to support all costs for becoming and remaining kosher to the top 100 restaurants according to this rating system within a given geographic area.
Variations
The number 100 (i.e., “the top 100”) is arbitrary and can be adapted to the number of restaurants in the given area.
Since restaurants may enter or leave the top 100 over time, one may smooth out variations by limiting the offer to restaurants that have remained in the top 100 for 3 out of the 5 last ranking updates (or some similar measure).
The challenges involved with “going kosher” might surmount the potential benefit of joining this initiative. As such, it may be necessary to add a financial inducement (e.g., $100k / quarter of being kosher) to sweeten the inducement.
Analysis
There are several benefits and risks to proposed approach.
Benefits
Open Marketplace. In the modern context, “going kosher” takes an establishment, in part, out of the open marketplace by disproportionately appealing to a fixed based of customers (i.e., those who keep kosher and cannot eat at non-kosher establishments). The goal of this proposal is to return kosher establishments into the broader marketplace by removing “kosher” as a defining attribute.
Improved stature. Limiting the “going kosher” opportunity to top-rated restaurants enhances the reputation of kosher establishments. Kosher will be associated with recognized quality, encouraging adoption among other establishments.
Risks
Insufficient inducement. Restaurants that are highly rates are already successful and making money. The idea of making more money in such an artificial and potentially constraining mechanism might not be appealing.
Non-sustainable. There is no clear mechanism for making this approach self-sustaining, in the sense that the restaurants involved may continue to need funding throughout the time that they are kosher, if there is not sufficient kosher-dependent clientele to maintain the benefits to the establishment.
Feedback
(Provide comments and criticisms below).
For establishments owned by a Jew, most supervisory agencies will require the cessation of business on the Jewish Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Beyond this, establishments may be limited by the availability schedule of kosher supervisors.
For example, no pork products or mixtures of dairy and meat.