the krembo shortage of 2020

Ice cream is not a big thing in Israel during the winter season. It used to be that it was actually fairly difficult to find much ice cream available for purchase in the stores during the winter. Ice cream was mostly replaced with "warm ice cream", aka the krembo.

In recent years there has been an improvement, with ice cream sold fairly commonly throughout the winter.

Yes, I see nothing wrong with eating ice cream in the winter, nor with eating good hot soup in the summer. 

It seems Israelis are going to have a bad winter. Not because of the ice cream, but because of the beloved Israeli ice cream winter replacement. The krembo.

The krembo/crembo looks like it will be going the way of the Dodo bird, at least for this year.

According to Ynet, another unexpected victim of the CoronaVirus, or victim of 2020, is the krembo.

Stores are reporting a shortage of krembo, and Feldman, one of the main local manufacturers of the krembo (or actually of the "off brand" Menbo) has said that it has become too expensive to produce so they are considering stopping production entirely. They say they are looking at ways to continue to produce it and to make it profitable and worthwhile. It seems the problematic part of the process is the foil individual wrapping done by hand.

Strauss, producers of 90% of the krembos on the market stopped using the hand individually wrapped foil system a couple of years ago to improve the profit margins, switching to plastic containers, and say now that they are putting great effort into keeping the shelves stocked with krembo for the winter. They say demand for krembo has gone up this year because people are stuck at home much more and want this comfort food during the winter.

I am not really sure why it is a shortage of Strauss is at full production and they are holding 90% of the market. Feldman is stopping because they don't find it profitable, and maybe they have a nice little piece of the market, but 90% is nothing to sneeze at.

I welcome more people to the dark side - the eating of ice cream int he winter, due to a possible krembo shortage, just make sure there is enough for me!

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