Kosher has been cool for nearly 90 years at Elman’s Food Products but the Winnipeg-based food manufacturer is officially hot thanks to a growth spurt under its new owners.
Sales of pickles, horse radish, beets, pickled eggs, hot mustard and sweet relish have grown by 20 per cent over the last year and that’s got Kapil Gusain and Ritesh Patel mapping out an expansion plan. The pair has been in business together for the last decade as owners of three Cilantros restaurants, which specialize in Indian cuisine, in Winnipeg. They bought Elman’s in late 2024 after searching far and wide for a business to buy to help diversify their operations.
“We were looking for something in food but different than restaurants. We visited the Elman’s plant, we really liked it and decided to go into food processing,” he says. “It was a family business for so many years but we don’t think it was very competitive. They were working on the business but not a lot on growing it.”
Gusain and Patel have added 170 grocery stores in Alberta and Saskatchewan to its retail footprint over the last six months. Elman’s products are primarily available in Western Canada but Gusain is working on getting a national license so the company can expand to the east. They’re also working on expanding their contracts with food services companies, such as Sysco Canada, Pratts Wholesale Food Service and Gordon Food Service.
“We make a 20-litre pail of pickles for restaurants and hotels,” he says.
There’s still some room at its 8,000-square-foot plant on Jarvis Avenue but with the current growth trajectory, they’ll be bursting at the seams by next year.
They’re going to need more refrigeration and storage space and some of the tasks that the 20 employees do by hand today will need to be automated.
“Pickles are bagged by hand, lids are put on jars by hand and we sort cucumbers by eyeballing the bad ones. We need automation to kick out the bad ones,” he says.
How it all began
Elman’s Food Products was started by Samuel Finkleman in 1938 and continued by his son, Manny. Following Manny’s death in 2004, his wife, Millie, ran the company until shortly before her death a couple of years ago. Shortly after, the family decided to sell the business.
Two of Manny’s earliest employees were his sons, Chip and Pepper Foster. The high-energy twins went on to start Chip & Pepper Wetwear in the 1980s before branching out into denim. The pair got into legal trouble three years ago after a high-profile purchase of KUB Bakery because they weren’t paying a variety of bills. A collection agency reportedly has dozens of clients looking to get money back from the pair, led by the Royal Bank of Canada, which says it is owed nearly $700,000.
Millie’s daughter, Payton Krause, carries the family banner as an Elman’s sales representative in B.C.
