In the days before Passover on the Lower East Side, we’ve been missing Streit’s Matzo, which sold its Rivington Street factory in 2015 and moved to Rockland County. In The Jewish Daily Forward, there’s a feature this week on the family-run business.
In Orangeburg, New York, Streit’s is now operating out of a 112,000 square foot facility (twice the size of the makeshift Lower East Side headquarters). While the new factory has been up-and-running since January 2017, this is the first year that all of the company’s Passover matzo was produced there. The move was not an easy one – logistically or emotionally — for the Streit family. But as The Forward reports, the new facility makes Streit’s a stronger competitor in the food industry:
If Streit’s former location was Willy Wonka-esque, the new one is straight out of The Matrix, with high-tech robotic pickers and computers controlling conveyor belts and convection ovens producing 2700 lbs. of matzo an hour, a far cry from the 1600 lbs. the former ovens were outputting.
The seven story luxury condo building replacing the factory at 150 Rivington St. was recently topped off. All four penthouse units are under contract for around $4 million each.
