local
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



H O L D C O U R T.

Lipkin’s Bakery at 8013 Castor Ave. in Northeast Philadelphia closed to the
public on May 2.

Jewish Exponent archives
“New York is supposed to be the knish
capital of the United States. But people
have come down from New York ...

because they like our knishes better.”
STEVEN NAWALANY
Klein from Th e Inquirer wrote [an
article], and then literally all hell broke
loose. People were coming in and buy-
ing four, fi ve, six dozen knishes at a
time just to freeze them.”
For loyal customers, Lipkin’s is sym-
bolic of a quintessential Jewish bakery,
a staple in American Jewish commu-
nities. “Th ey say you cannot be Jewish on
an island, that being Jewish is being
part of a community, and part of your
community means your food and your
people around you,” Abington resident
Irénke Margit said. “Having Jewish
places for Jewish community is sort
of a Philly cornerstone, I think, of a
community.” Th e origins of Lipkin’s, however,
started out a little lonelier, when the
grandfather of Mitch Lipkin, a baker,
emigrated from Poland to the United
States. Secretly taking shelter on a boat,
Lipkin was diverted by the ship’s crew,
who threatened to throw him over-
board into the ocean, Nawalany said.

Lipkin made the argument that he had
a greater purpose on the ship and in
America: He could bake.

Upon arriving in Philadelphia,
Lipkin bought a South Philadelphia
bakery space from the Lipton family.

Aft er a fi re in the South Philadelphia
location, the bakery moved to two loca-
tions in the Northeast; another fi re at
one location gave Lipkin’s its home on
Castor Avenue.

It’s the same spot Barbara Ravisky
has patronized since the 1970s, favor-
ing the bakery’s hamantaschen and
rye bread over the knishes. Ravisky,
79, remembers Lipkin’s as always being
packed. “Everybody would come in — it was
always crowded,” she said. “Sometimes
you couldn’t even go into the store. You
had to wait until someone got the order
and left .”
Before Nawalany took over, he was in
the automotive service business for 25
years but loved the job for the social com-
ponent: He loved greeting customers.

He was also a decades-long fan of
Lipkin’s, with the bakery even supply-
ing his cake for his bar mitzvah. It’s a
love that continues today, making the
interim period between bakery spaces
bittersweet for Nawalany.

“It’s only been a couple of days, and I
miss it,” he said. JE
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srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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