Lubavitcher Named Jewish Chicagoan of the Year

Yakov Yarmove once had his career path laid out, then went down a different road. Kosher consumers can be happy he did.

Yarmove’s official title is corporate business manager for ethnic and specialty foods for SuperValu, the parent company of Jewel-Osco grocery stores and 15 other supermarket chains throughout the country. In that capacity, he manages the kosher sections for more than 1,300 stores across the United States, and has played a major role in the explosion of kosher and Israeli products in many of those supermarkets.

Beyond that, this genial businessman in a suit, tie and yarmulke helps to educate store managers and staff about kashrut, traveling as many as 40 weeks of the year to outlets from Salt Lake City, Utah to Boise, Idaho from his Chicago home.

Being an ambassador for kosher foods is not what Yarmove dreamed of doing as a youth. Born and raised in Cincinnati, he chose a career path as a hospital chaplain as early as high school. After he graduated from yeshiva and rabbinical college just after the era of Operation Desert Storm, he planned to go into the military as a chaplain.

“Then the beard issue came up,” he says. As a Lubavitcher chasid, “we don’t touch our beards at all” for religious reasons. “But the military wasn’t budging and insisted that I shave it off. I had to make a hard choice,” he says.

He gave up on the military and shortly afterwards took a job running a small bakery and deli in Cleveland. That led to a career in the food industry beginning with an upstate New York chain, where he worked every department and then moved on to management, which included overseeing kosher operations. He then went to another chain that was eventually bought by SuperValu and has worked for that company for five years.

Chicago is now his base of operation. A primary reason he and his wife, Miriam, moved here was so that their children could attend top-notch Jewish day schools. There are six of them, from a boy in rabbinical college to a baby girl born within the last year. In a sports-oriented family, all of them root for different teams, Yarmove reports, depending on the city they were born in. There are a few Cubs fans now that the family has put down Chicago roots.

In the kosher business, Yarmove has seen and been a part of a sea change in the last decade or so. Whereas some ethnic food consumers like to stick to traditional dishes, it’s different for many of those who keep kosher, he says.

“They want some variety. For instance, kosher sushi has exploded. If you were to ask 10 years ago, people would say, su-what? Now it’s the hottest thing at every bar mitzvah, wedding and bris.”

And it’s not just sushi. People, even those who don’t keep kosher, “are looking for more organic items, looking for items to have another qualifier. Kosher is one of them. Consumers who aren’t even Jewish see it as another level of inspection and endorsement,” he says.

The trend reaches its highest level at Passover, when Yarmove travels to more than 200 stores to oversee the packed aisles. “Customers say, I can’t believe they made this for Pesach. They are amazed at the plethora of items available. They’ll say, I thought this was a holiday of abstinence,” he says with a chuckle.

Importing products from Israel is his special passion. He visits once a year to discover new products and vendors.

Yarmove sees a bright future for kosher foods and believes that brick-and-mortar stores like Jewel will continue to captivate kosher consumers despite competition from online retailers and big box outlets.

As he visits stores, he says, he asks himself, “How can we give an experience to individual guests – whether they’re looking for foods that are ethnic, kosher, natural, organic, vegan – so they say, that’s my store, I love to shop here?” His answer: “Make this an experience, a great clean beautiful store with outstanding customer service.”

Nor does he think online shopping will replace the real thing, at least for kosher consumers. “We wandered 40 years in the desert,” he says. “What’s another 45 minutes?”