Seasons, the largest US kosher supermarket chain, is owned by the Bistritzky family after a 2018 bankruptcy. Gourmet Glatt, its main Five Towns rival, is co-owned by Yoeli Steinberg and Moshe Ratner.
Seasons, America's largest kosher supermarket chain, is owned by the family of Joseph Bistritzky, CEO of Brooklyn's Maramont Corp, who bought the chain out of bankruptcy in 2019. Gourmet Glatt, its main competitor in the Five Towns, is co-owned by Yoeli Steinberg and Moshe Ratner. Both chains grew out of single Queens and Cedarhurst storefronts into regional kosher grocery networks.
Who owns Seasons, America's largest kosher supermarket chain?
The Bistritzky family owns Seasons through Joseph Bistritzky, CEO of the Maramont Corp, a Brooklyn-based foodservice company. Bistritzky purchased the chain in January 2019 after Seasons filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2018 carrying more than $40 million in debt, according to reporting by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Supermarket News.
Seasons opened its first store in Queens in 2011 under founding CEO Mayer Gold and expanded into Maryland and planned an Ohio location before the bankruptcy filing forced those stores to close, along with locations on Manhattan's Upper West Side and in Scarsdale, New York. Under Bistritzky ownership, Seasons relaunched with six stores across Scarsdale, Clifton, Lakewood, Lawrence, and Queens, according to the Herald Community Newspapers.
Joseph Bistritzky is the son of the late Rabbi Leibel Bistritzky, who ran Bistritzky's Kosher Gourmet Food on Manhattan's Lower East Side and co-founded Hatzalah of Crown Heights, a volunteer ambulance corps, before his death in 2013. The family has framed its Seasons ownership as an extension of that multi-generational kosher food retail background.
Who owns Gourmet Glatt, the Five Towns' rival to Seasons?
Yoeli Steinberg and Moshe Ratner co-own Gourmet Glatt Emporium, according to a 2013 Nassau County business recognition announcement that named both men co-owners. The chain began as a single Cedarhurst grocery store and grew into what Nassau County officials described as the Five Towns' kosher food superstore within less than a decade.
Gourmet Glatt operates locations in Cedarhurst, Borough Park, Woodmere, and Lakewood, New Jersey, expanding through acquisitions of shuttered competitor sites, including a former Key Food location in Woodmere and an attempted purchase of the closed Brach's store in Lawrence. Steinberg serves as vice president and general manager, handling day-to-day operations and community relations, while purchasing manager Howie Klagsbrun oversees vendor relationships.
Gourmet Glatt and Seasons compete directly across overlapping Five Towns and Brooklyn markets, but the two chains have also cooperated during crises. When a 2016 fire closed Gourmet Glatt's Cedarhurst store, Seasons owner Mayer Gold took in Glatt's deliveries and put nearly 20 Gourmet Glatt employees to work in his own store, an arrangement Gourmet Glatt had reciprocated for Seasons after an earlier fire at its Queens location.
How did bankruptcy reshape ownership of the kosher grocery sector?
Seasons' 2018 bankruptcy filing eliminated a wave of national expansion plans and consolidated the chain under single-family ownership for the first time. Before the filing, Seasons operated eight locations and was expanding toward a national kosher supermarket model; after the Bistritzky family's 2019 purchase, the chain scaled back to a defined regional footprint centered on the New York metro area and northern New Jersey.
The bankruptcy also reshuffled competitive dynamics in the Five Towns specifically. Brach's, a third major kosher supermarket in the area, sold its original Kew Gardens Hills location and eventually closed its Lawrence store, a closure Gourmet Glatt moved to fill by attempting to acquire the vacated space, according to the Jewish Star's local business reporting.
What does kosher grocery ownership reveal about the sector?
Both Seasons and Gourmet Glatt remain privately held by the founding or acquiring families rather than by outside investors or public shareholders, a pattern distinct from Israel's kosher food manufacturing sector, where multinationals like Nestle hold outright control of major producers such as Osem's bakery and snack lines. Neither Seasons nor Gourmet Glatt has taken on institutional capital or expanded through franchising, keeping decision-making concentrated with Bistritzky at Seasons and Steinberg and Ratner at Gourmet Glatt.
The sector's growth has tracked the geographic concentration of Orthodox Jewish communities rather than broad national retail strategy. Both chains cluster stores in the Five Towns, Brooklyn, and New Jersey communities including Lakewood and Clifton, a pattern that also shapes which brands appear on their shelves, detailed in Olam's map of America's kosher food brand owners and the wider kosher economy guide.
