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Lipkin’s Bakery Closes,
Looks for New Home
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
A t Lipkin’s Bakery in Northeast
Philadelphia, the knish
extruder pumped out more
than 35 knishes a minute like the infa-
mous “I Love Lucy” chocolate conveyor
belt. With the high demand for the potato
knish, a favorite among customers,
Lipkin’s produced a whopping 2,592 of
the potato-filled pastries per week, but
hey, who’s counting.

Lipkin’s Bakery owner Steven
Nawalany is. The knish has been his
prized product at Lipkin’s since he took
over the business from Mitch Lipkin
with J Franciotti in 2016.

“New York is supposed to be the
8 MAY 12, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
knish capital of the United States,” he
said. “But people have come down from
New York — we’re gonna ship stuff to
them — because they like our knishes
better.” But as of last week, the knish extruder
at Lipkin’s has been shut off. The bakery
closed its doors to the public on May 2
and stopped delivering to partnering
synagogues and delis a week after.

Feeling the strain of economic chal-
lenges, Nawalany, 55, is selling the
building, though Lipkin’s baked goods
are far from gone from Philadelphia.

Nawalany had trouble hiring
employees to interact with customers.

He had plenty of back-of-house help
in the kitchen but lacked committed
employees at the front.

“Another big part of it was the ingre-
dients,” Nawalany said. “The location
we were in, you can only raise the price
so much.”
Lipkin’s still sold knishes in the store
for $1.50 each, a remaining vestige of
the Lipkin family belief that everyone
should be able to afford a high-quality
product. But sourcing ingredients — baker’s
cheese, eggs and butter — was near
impossible at times, Nawalany said.

When the products were available, they
were expensive.

Before the pandemic, cream cheese
cost $48 for a 30-pound block; in
the weeks before Lipkin’s closing,
Nawalany paid $128 for the same
amount. If there was a listeria breakout
at a Pennsylvania chicken farm, the
price for eggs jumped drastically.

Though brick-and-mortar retail is
unsustainable for Nawalany, he’s ready
to pivot to a smaller operation, provid-
ing wholesale knishes.

A wholesale bakery would allow
Lipkin’s to attain a more rigorous
kosher status with Keystone K, making
it one of the few kosher bakeries in
the area. They would be able to take
Saturdays off for Shabbat, a luxury
Nawalany couldn’t afford with a retail
storefront. He’s working with partners to find
a new space near Rittenhouse Square.

Nawalany is certain the demand for
his products is there, but he didn’t real-
ize the extent of the demand until he
closed his doors.

“I didn’t realize how big we actually
were,” Nawalany said. “Then Michael