Bakery fills kosher meat void in north Winnipeg

WINNIPEG — It looks like the final curtain has fallen on Omnitsky Fine Foods, Winnipeg’s last kosher butcher shop.

Winnipeg kosher baker Arthur Gunn with Shefa meat products .

Since no one has come forward to buy and re-open Omnitsky, which closed at the end of April, the store and its equipment are slated to go on the auction block Sept. 20.

But for Jews in Winnipeg’s north end who are concerned about being left without kosher meat by Omnitsky’s closing, there are now two new alternatives. (South-end residents can buy frozen imported kosher meat at either the privately owned Desserts Plus or the Sobey’s supermarket in the area.)

At the beginning of September, Gunn’s Bakery on Selkirk Avenue added frozen, packaged kosher meat to its selection of bakery and cheese products.

Gunn’s is one of two longstanding kosher bakeries in Winnipeg. (The other, City Bread, is best known for its rye and sells its products across Canada.) Gunn’s has been in business at the same north Winnipeg location for 71 years.

“The north end wasn’t being well served as far as the availability of kosher meat was concerned,” said Arthur (Fivie) Gunn, who lives in the north end and co-owns Gunn’s with his brother, Bernie.

“A lot of people still live north,” he said. “We felt that [carrying kosher meat] would make their lives a little easier.”

Gunn’s is bringing in Shefa meat products from Toronto. The selection thus far includes roasts, briskets, stewing meat, hot dogs and other pre-sliced deli meats in small quantities. Gunn’s is also selling Chai chickens from Toronto.

“We intend to expand the variety of meat products that we are bringing in response to customer demands,” Gunn said.

He said Gunn’s won’t be using the meat in its catering or opening packages and cutting the meat. “We are just buying and selling,” he said.

An IGA store in north Winnipeg actually began bringing in kosher meats and chickens in small quantities two years ago, when Omnitsky first ran afoul of the local hechsher agency and temporarily lost its kashrut certification. At the time, Wayne Hamel, owner of IGA on Main, expressed unhappiness with the quality of the meat that was being shipped to him from Toronto, as well as about the prices he had to charge for the product.

“We have continually carried Chai chicken for the past two years, and demand is continuing to grow,” said Steve Boyle, the store’s meat manager. “We used to have to restock twice a week. Now we restock daily.”

IGA has recently been bringing in some beef and deli meat products from Continental in Montreal, and the products have been selling well, Boyle said.

“We have had a lot of requests for luncheon meat,” he said. “The product we are getting in now [including hot dogs, salami, bologna, pastrami] is nice. We also have some roasts and briskets coming in for the holidays.”

And there is hope once again that locally slaughtered kosher meat – with resulting lower prices – will be available here in the not-too-distant future.

The community has been without fresh kosher meat since the vaad discontinued local shchitah two years ago, at the same time as Omnitsky’s kashrut certification was revoked. A consortium of cattle producers are operating a beef slaughtering and processing facility in an industrial area of Winnipeg that will include a kosher slaughtering line.

The company behind the slaughtering and processing facility, Natural Prairie Beef, has been working with kashrut consultant Sid Estrin of Edmonton. Estrin said he operated a kosher slaughtering facility in Illinois several years ago and has been working as a consultant to the kosher slaughtering industry in locales such as New York and the American Midwest.

The plant is scheduled to be operational some time in 2010.