Made in Michigan Gift Basket

The (mostly true) origin story of Zingerman’s

Paul Saginaw (Detroit) and Ari Weinzweig (Chicago) met while working at the same restaurant in the late 70s. They dreamed of opening a classic Jewish corner deli in their adopted home (Ann Arbor). When a century old 900 square foot building on a cobblestone street opened up it felt like fate. They opened the doors of Zingerman’s Delicatessen on March 15th, 1982. Think pressed tin ceiling and black and white tiled floor and you’ve got the picture. Five tables, some stools in the window and a menu with twenty five different sandwiches. It was a bohemian food lovers paradise, shopped and staffed by friends. It was—and remains—a bustling food oasis with an awesome mix of regulars, college students, tourists, high school students, parents, visitors, first timers, foodies, fans and adventurers. Please come visit.

We were in commerce before there was e-commerce

Historians speak of a time before the Internet made order of chaos. When cooking shows only aired on PBS. When the celebrity chef du jour was Paul Prudhomme. When no one—I mean no one—took a picture of their dinner. They called it “1992” and it was electric. 

It was the year we packed our first box. On a prep table in the basement of Zingerman’s Delicatessen. We haven’t slowed down since. Back then we took orders on carbonless paper in triplicate. We had a touch tone phone and a cassette answering machine we bought at Target for twenty bucks. There are probably adults reading this right now who have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s how long we’ve been shipping great food. 

The food is the thing

We swear the food we sell is the best tasting we can find. That’s 1,000% true. But there’s more to it. Like Alexander Hamilton we’re never satisfied. So we keep looking. We’re constantly comparing the food we sell to the new food we find. If we like the new stuff better, that’s what we want to sell. It means constantly tasting and tasting and tasting some more to make sure what was true yesterday is still true today. 

We don’t just pull food off a shelf and ship it

Take cheese. It’s a living food that keeps developing and deepening its flavors the longer it stays as a part of the wheel. That’s why we hand-cut your cheese to order directly from the wheel right before we ship it out the door. It’s more difficult than grabbing a pre-packaged wedge from a distributor. It takes lots of training. But the flavor is worth it. 

Zingerman’s Bakehouse—same story. They make all our breads and pastries by hand about a mile up the road. They don’t use any preservatives in their breads, they just let the crust be the natural protector of the crumb inside. We wrap it in paper by hand, pack it in boxes by hand, and, well, you get the idea. 

It’s all in Ann Arbor, Michigan

We started in this college town. And that’s where we’re staying. We don’t have locations around the country. We don’t have a call center in Iowa. Or India. We don’t fulfill with Amazon. We don’t outsource. We insource. 

We are real live human beings

No chatbots. No phone trees. No auto-email. Actually, there’s one, but it’s the most fun auto-email you’ll ever get, promise. When you call, you talk to us. When your order is packed it is packed by us. When we make a mistake, that’s us too. (And we’ll do whatever it takes to make it right.)

Our guarantee is rather crazy 

You know how some companies put up a bunch of rules and hurdles to overcome before they’ll give you a refund or ship out a new product? That’s not us. No rules. No returns. If you experience a problem with our food, service, shipping—or even if you simply don’t like how it tastes—let us know. We believe you. We’ll do whatever it takes to make it right. And you never have to return anything. 

Our horn, tooted by others

OK it always feels weird to share these kinds of things but they’re also kind of awesome. So here goes.

The reuben is killer.

Barack Obama, POTUS #44

Zingerman’s sandwiches are an 11 on a scale of 1 to 5.

Oprah, Midwesterner

My favorite store in the cosmos.

Jim Harrison, Writer, poet, trencherman

Arguably the best mail order gourmet food specialist in the nation.

Larry Olmstead, Forbes

Now that’s a sandwich!

Michael Ivins, Flaming Lips bassist, now retired from rock and roll

I ordered brownies for my daughter and her husband in Denver.  A coyote got into the box and ate most of the brownies. Not a very nice birthday surprise, but you came to my rescue. We came up with a new (secure) address and you replaced the brownies free of charge. 

Dave in Holt, Michigan

Zingerman’s—I think everyone around the country should love them.

Alejandra Ramos, Today Show

One of the country’s iconic food markets.

Kate Krader, Bloomberg

When it comes to the best place in America to buy cheese—OK, let’s all agree there’s absolutely no contest. It’s Zingerman’s.

Wall Street Journal

Zingerman’s is a legend.

USA Today

Thank you for having a company that ships great food overnight when children forget their parents’ 39th wedding anniversary and are in a bind.

Leah in Fredericksburg, Virginia

We ship our breads using two business day service. Each of our breads comes wrapped in a paper bread bag. If you’ll be eating it within a few days, store it on the counter. You can also wrap it in plastic and freeze it for longer storage (up to three months). 

Do not be alarmed if the bread seems hard or dry… our crust is the best (and only!) preservative in our bread. It’s almost magical how well it returns to that “fresh-baked” status with a little time in the oven. Crispy, thick crust; soft, chewy crumb inside.

The “bread revival” instructions are written on that paper bread bag for the best and most flavorful results. We suggest putting in a 350 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes. When it’s ready it tastes like it just came out of our Bakehouse oven!

American Spoon jarred its first preserves in Petoskey, Michigan in 1982. At the time, if you wanted high-quality preserves you had to look to Europe. “We wanted to reintroduce America to the amazing foods being made right here.” Said Noah Marshall-Rashid, son of Justin Rashid, founder of the company.

Like Zingerman’s (we started in 1982, too), American Spoon decided to stay relatively small. They had opportunities to become a large-scale producer distributing preserves to grocery store chains across the country. Instead they focused on flavor, not finance. “We think of ourselves as craft-makers,” Noah continued. “We don’t let efficiency get in the way of the taste. Slow cooking in small batches is still the way we do things because it makes the best tasting preserves.”

Climate counts

“Michigan’s distinct micro-climate yields the most flavorful fruit in America,” says Noah. “The short growing season and lots of sunlight leads to an incredible development of sugar and flavors in the fruit. That means our preserves taste different (better) than preserves made in other parts of the country.” Our changing seasons also mean that each fruit is only available for a few short weeks. Strawberries are around for about three weeks; peaches have maybe four weeks. Throughout the summer and fall, there’s a steady stream of new, luscious fruits to preserve.

Hedging farmer risk

Farmers don’t like to take risks. They wouldn’t choose to plant some varieties—like Early Glow Strawberries, which are small, fickle, but oh so delicious—unless American Spoon was there to buy the harvest. “We invest heavily in our relationships with growers and foragers that we enjoy and admire.” Noah continued. “Our success is tied to their success.”

Limited productions, like Wild Thimbleberry Preserves, are only possible because of dedicated foragers. The fruits take a tremendous amount of work to gather during very short harvests, but because American Spoon is there to buy the fruit, it’s worth it for the foragers. Without relationships like that, we might never get to taste some of these exquisite fruits in a jar.

Big enough, small enough

The size of American Spoon is an asset in the increasingly competitive artisan preserves market. “We can produce more jars than most artisan jam makers and that gives us some financial freedom,” Noah explained. “We can find something exceptional that we love, develop a unique recipe and only make it for a short period of time and not worry about its sales,” Noah continued. “Seasonal releases are not just okay, they make you a more interesting company. Customers come back for the next special release. You’re more than just a jam maker, you’re introducing people to something new all the time.” That’s a freedom most start-ups can’t afford.

The recipe for Cream-Nut peanut butter from Koeze (rhymes with Susie) in Grand Rapids, Michigan hasn’t changed since Albertus Koeze started making it in 1925. The equipment is old, too, from the middle of the last century. Even a lot of the staff have been there for decades. As Martin Andree, vice-president of Koeze puts it, “We’re not new. We’re not improved. We’re making the same product we’ve made all along.”

Why is Koeze’s peanut butter so good? Here are four reasons.

Koeze peanut butter starts with better peanuts.

There are four basic kinds of peanuts: runner, Spanish, Valencia, and Virginia. Ninety-nine percent of commercial peanut butter is made with low quality varieties of runner peanuts. They’re a high yielding crop, which means they’re inexpensive, the primary concern of most commercial peanut butter makers. However, they don’t taste all that great.

At Koeze, they’ve been using a high grade of Virginia peanuts since day one. They’re large, very flavorful, and typically rather expensive so they don’t end up in peanut butter too often. Instead most Virginia peanuts are roasted and sold for snacking (like our Virginia Diner Peanuts).

They add salt, but nothing else.

To mask the lackluster flavor of the poor quality peanut, most peanut butter makers add a bunch of sugar. They also usually whip in hydrogenated vegetable oils to keep the peanut oil from separating from the peanut butter. In addition to adding trans fats they can give the peanut butter a gummy texture.

At Koeze, the only ingredient other than peanuts is a pinch of sea salt. That means when you taste it you’re tasting the rich, slow roasted peanut flavor, not a bunch of sugar or binders.

Koeze takes time to smell the roasting nuts.

The industry standard these days is to use very hot ovens and conveyor belts to quickly roast enormous batches of peanuts. While faster production is less expensive, the savings come at the expense of flavor. That fast, hot conveyor belt roasting doesn’t give the peanuts much of a chance to develop color – or flavor. A lot of commercial peanut butters add molasses (more sugar!) to darken the color and mask the product’s shortcomings.

Koeze roasts their peanuts in an old coffee roaster from the 1940s. Inside the roaster, 300-pound batches of peanuts are turned slowly over a flame, roasting gently until they reach a rich golden-brown color. That’s caramelization—the same thing that makes a crusty end of bread or a seared steak so delicious. It imparts a sweet, roasty flavor to the nuts. It also makes the production space smell incredible, like fresh peanut butter cookies that have just come out of the oven.

They taste every single batch.

In spite of years of experience making peanut butter, the workers at Koeze still taste every single batch. They’re checking to make sure it has the rich, roasted peanut flavor and velvety—but still slightly chunky, with small bits of peanuts intentionally left in even in the creamy peanut butter—texture. They make peanut butter frequently enough that it’s usually not more than a few weeks old before it’s shipped out.

Since Koeze doesn’t have those oils added, it may separate over time. Store it in the fridge to reduce that separation anxiety, and as a bonus, seeing it every time you open the fridge will help you remember you’re never more than a few minutes away from the best PB&J you can imagine.