The story
Founded by Dov Behr Manischewitz in 1888, in Cincinnati.1
Because matzo must go from mixing to baking in a very short period of time to prevent the possibility of the dough rising, before the mid-1800s, matzo was typically baked in purpose-built ovens located in synagogues. Starting in the mid-1800s, it was typically baked in small bakeries with specialized machines. It was often not easily accessible to non-wealthy families.
The B. Manischewitz Company, LLC was founded by Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz, in 1888 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Manischewitz designed a machine that could cut and bake matzo in a form that was easily packaged and shipped, which made producing it less expensive and so more available to most US Jews. The company went public in 1923 and remained a public corporation until it was taken private in a management buyout led by Kohlberg & Company in 1990 for $42.5 million. By 1926, the Cuvier Press Club described it as the largest firm of matzo bakers in the world, and the first American exporter of the flatbread.
In the 1930s, in order to produce their products all year round, the company created Tam-Tam crackers, which are small hexagonal matzos, according to a recent book Manischewitz: The Matzo Family, written by the founder's great-granddaughter, Laura Manischewitz Alpern (though the modern Tam Tam is quite different from matzo). Their original product, the square matzo, revolutionized matzo-making, which until the family's production process, used to consist of rolling the matzo and trimming the edges by hand. It was also considered quite revolutionary to make matzos by machine. The company built a second production site on Bay Street in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1932, to better serve the large Jewish community of the New York metropolitan area, and the Cincinnati facility was eventually closed in 1958.
In 1990, a $1 million fine was levied against the company for price fixing with its two main competitors at the time, Streit's and Horowitz-Margareten. In 1998, Richard A. Bernstein purchased the company from KKR. In 2004 its name was changed to the R.A.B. Food Group, LLC and today it is known as The Manischewitz Company.
From 2007 to 2014, Manischewitz was owned by the hedge fund Harbinger Capital. Manischewitz remains the world's top matzo manufacturer and one of America's top kosher brands. On June 14, 2011, a new 200,000-square-foot (19,000 m2) facility opened at 80 Avenue K in the East Ward of Newark, New Jersey, serving as both a plant and corporate headquarters for the company. In July 2017 the company closed the facility in favor of another New Jersey location, cutting 169 jobs.
From Wikipedia’s article on Manischewitz, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4