Kosher consumers in the Kansas City area will be faced with some changes over the next several months. The Leawood Hen House located at 117th and Roe — the grocery store that houses several kosher departments including a fresh bakery and deli — will be closed for several months beginning Dec. 25 for extensive remodeling.
Rabbi Mendel Segal, executive director of the Vaad HaKashruth of Kansas City, said the Vaad has been working closely with Hen House to make sure the kosher services the Jewish community depends on are disrupted as little as possible. Many of the Leawood Hen House’s kosher offerings will be moving to the store’s 135th and Metcalf Deer Creek location.
“It’s all relatively going to stay the same besides the deli counter,” Rabbi Segal said.
Kosher services moving to Deer Creek include:
• Dairy and pareve bakery — including bread, bagels, buns, cakes, pies and more
Kosher grocery items — including frozen, dairy and meat
Kosher for Passover section
In an email sent out to the Vaad’s email list on Monday morning, the Vaad also said, “A plan to offer sliced deli meats and limited prepared foods is also in the works. We will keep you posted.”
On Monday morning, Rabbi Segal and David F. Ball, president of Balls Food Stores, which owns 28 Hen House Markets and Ball’s Price Choppers, each said that many of the particulars of moving kosher departments to the Deer Creek location are still being worked out. As of Monday, Rabbi Segal did not know exactly when the bakery at Deer Creek will be certified kosher because it will have to be kashered.
“We’re going to try to make the least amount of gap as possible but we don’t have an exact time as to when it’s going to change over,” he said.
“We may have to phase things in. We may not have everything available 100 percent the first day. It may be a week getting (bakers) used to the new operation and then we’ll introduce new items.”
All the fresh kosher baked goods at the Deer Creek location will be marked kosher, certified by the Vaad.
“Due to certain limitations we won’t be able to kasher the entire bakery, so there will not be one large sign that says this bakery is certified kosher. Individual items will be marked and it will be the vast majority of items,” Rabbi Segal said.
He noted customers will have to pay strict attention to the signs, stressing that some items in the bakery will not be kosher.
It is Rabbi Segal’s understanding that the fresh and frozen kosher cases will be moved to Deer Creek “as close to the 25th as possible.”
One of the bigger questions Rabbi Segal has been fielding regarding the availability of kosher products is about Passover.
“I’ve been told that what they have done until now at the Leawood Hen House, with the exception of the deli, will be the same at the Deer Creek location,” he said, adding that now is the time that stores begin ordering Passover products.
According to Hen House’s Ball, the Leawood location has been open since 1991. He said the store has always carried kosher products, especially by customer request. The Leawood location opened its kosher deli department, certified by the Vaad, in January of 2007. At that time Irv’s Market, the area’s only kosher market, lost its kosher certification because it was unable to fulfill the Vaad’s requirement that a mashgiach (kosher supervisor) be present at all times when meat is being prepared. Irv’s, which had closed its freestanding operation and was operating in a space inside the Hen House at Antioch and College Boulevard, closed in April 2007. (That Hen House location closed several years ago.)
Hen House began operating a kosher bakery in the mid-1990s.
“We just did it to take care of the kosher community,” said Ball of the decisions Hen House made to add the bakery and eventually the deli department.
Ball said the company is very excited about the major remodel of the Leawood location.
“We really didn’t want to close but we really had no option to stay open from a safety standpoint. We will be able to get the project done four times faster by closing for a short period of time. I know it’s going to be a big inconvenience to our kosher customers but we want to service their needs and continue to provide more products and items and services to meet their needs,” he said.
When the store re-opens, Ball said, “It’s going to be unbelievable.”
