Duly chastened by the Great Tam Tam Crisis of spring 2008, the Manischewitz company went into overdrive and will have plenty of the crunchy six-sided unleavened crackers available this Passover season.
“Absolutely,” declared former Mani-schewitz CEO Bruce Bossidy in November.
Bossidy joined the nation’s oldest and largest matzah-making company in January 2008, when Manischewitz was in dire straits.
Quality standards weren’t being met, and the 120-year-old kosher manufacturer, a subsidiary of R.A.B. Holdings, was having trouble filling orders. Bossidy spent much of his first year cleaning house, bringing in new management, and getting the new matzah production line up and running at the company’s year-old, $15 million facility in Newark, N.J
But the clock ran down and early last year, Bossidy was forced to cancel Tam Tams for the first time in 68 years.
The outcry was immediate; Jewish consumers coast to coast mourned the absence of the beloved cracker. Stories ran not only in the Jewish media but also in the New York Times and New York Daily News, and on NPR. The blogosphere exploded with anger. A black market sprang up, with one Michigan rabbi offering three boxes of the previous year’s crackers on eBay; bidding started at $10.
This April, however, there will be more than enough to go around. All flavors of kosher for Passover Tam Tam crackers will be available except for Tiny Tams, which were not made because of complications with the die cut used to create them.
Bossidy also promised a sufficient amount of Passover matzah; last year saw shortages of the unleavened holiday bread in the Northeast and on the West Coast during the eight-day holiday.