Zoglovac's factory is located in Shlomi, 200-300 meters from the border. I open the laboratory window and I am in front of the Lebanon mountains. Shlomi is an evacuated settlement. We are an essential enterprise, we must continue to work even if it is an evacuated settlement and under fire. This is our reality in recent months. The missiles fall right next to us, a matter of hundreds of meters. When IEDs fall, there are no alarms. When there are alarms, we have ten seconds to run to shelter. It's an almost impossible task. We run and it falls while we're on our way." This is what Ronit Zoglovac, Vice President of Development and Innovation of Zoglovac, and the wife of Eli Zoglovac, the chairman of the group, told Ma'ariv Beshennik.
Since the outbreak of the Iron Swords War, the factory has been working under fire from Hezbollah and organizing is not easy. "The factory employs 700 workers, most of them from evacuated communities, who continue to come to the factory," says Zoglovac. "In order for them to come, we incentivize them financially. It is a very big challenge to manage in the current situation. We have to take care of even the most technical things, such as transportation, in order to bring the workers to the factory. I think that as an employer the first thing is security and safety, and today we cannot guarantee that We ask them to come, but we don't know how to provide them with a truly safe environment beyond the fact that we protected the factory and bought more shields, so that wherever a person is, he can run. We moved the offices to a lower floor so that they could work there. The reality, as mentioned, is that we are a factory that works under Ash, in very difficult conditions, and we love our employees who come and continue to work."
"No soldier remains hungry"
Despite this difficult reality, Zoglovac recently launched the new "Madame Perez" series of meat dishes, which includes seven homemade dishes, in the concept of a meal for two. This is a development of Zoglovac's innovation division, with the dishes being produced using a unique patented technology. The dishes are chilled, based on home recipes and without preservatives. They include Chicken Couscous Soup, Bolognese Sauce, Meatballs in Tomato Sauce, Chili Con Carne, Red Curry Chicken, Szechuan Chicken and Beef Saman Curry. All that is required is to prepare the side dish at home – pasta, rice, noodles or quick-to-prepare couscous – and quickly heat the dish in the microwave. The products of the series can be obtained in the marketing chains, with the recommended price for the consumer being NIS 34.90 per unit.
"Zoglovac also has a production line for prepared meals, and the first people to eat my meals were soldiers," says Zoglovac. "Hundreds and hundreds of rations were sent out every day, so that soldiers could eat. There was not a soldier in our vicinity who remained hungry. They were the first experimenters of the new series. We still deliver our ready-made meals to standby classes and bases in the north. If there is an iota of comfort, it is that this food reminds They have a home."
"Express love through the pots"
The fact that the series is called "Madame Perez" has a reason. "We struggled a lot about the name, it wasn't easy at all," says Zoglovac. "Eli and I sat for days and nights, so many offers came up and we didn't connect with anything. Food in the end is an emotion. On some Saturday I said to Eli: 'Madame Perez'. He looks at me and smiles. Madame Perez is my grandmother. In Casablanca they called her Madame Perez. Also When she immigrated to Israel, her friends called her that. Grandma for me is the warmth I received as a child, she is the emotion, she is the pots. She always expressed her love through the pots. At any time of the day you came to her, she always knew how to open her heart, the kitchen and put the best dishes Delicious. It was a very rich Moroccan cuisine that was influenced by the cultures of France and Spain. By the way, I also have a Polish grandmother in the story, I also have memories of carp in the bathtub and chicken legs with the nails coming out of the pot. As a child, I experienced diverse cuisine."
The Zoglovac Group, one of the pioneer food companies in Israel, began its journey in 1937, as a small factory for the production of sausage and kosher meat products established in Nahariya by Irmergard (Yona) and Reinhold (Abraham) Zoglovac, as the successor of an old and well-reputed family enterprise in Germany. Today, more than 80 years after its establishment, Zoglovac stands at the forefront of the Israeli food industry as a leading company in the production and marketing of a wide variety of meat products, sausages, pastrami, sausages, meat substitutes, prepared meals and plant products.
"An offer that's hard to refuse"
Laronit, 50, one of the leading food technologists in Israel, a graduate of the Department of Biochemistry and Food Sciences at the Hebrew University, certified in business administration from Ben-Gurion University, rich experience in the food industry and retail, with a specialization in innovation and the development of private brands. She joined Zoglovac four years ago with the aim of establishing the meat substitute start-up WONDERS, where she still serves as CEO. She later established the company's innovation division. Her connection to the Zoglovac family began about eight years ago, when she met Eli Zoglovac, the grandson of the founders. who eventually became her husband.
"For both of us, it's chapter two," she says. "We met at a food conference that I moderated in 2016. Ami Zoglubek, Eli's father, was supposed to attend the conference, but in the end he came to me. He claims that he looked at me all morning, of course I was busy and didn't see anything. From there, everything is history. We got married two years ago, every One brought his children to the relationship: three of mine, two of Eli."
Ronit Vali's connection also gave rise to a business and professional connection. "My specialization was in the development of private brands, I worked with the largest chains in Israel," she says. "In 2020, there was a very big buzz around meat substitutes. In the US and also in Israel, we saw a real boom in start-ups in this category. Eli wanted a long time for us to work together. Somewhere I had concerns about mixing personal life and professional life. Over the years, Eli occasionally offered me different offers to work with him at Zoglovac, and I always refused. Then in 2020 he made an offer that was hard for me to refuse."
What charms you about this offer?
"Eli came and said, 'We will set up a start-up of meat substitutes and you come to manage it'. He offered me to be CEO of a start-up. It's an offer I already had a hard time saying no to, what's more, the view was global. We founded the start-up WONDERS, we developed a series of meat substitutes. However, over time we realized that the analysts' forecasts do not meet reality."
What is meant by?
"The forecasts talked about the fact that within 10 years 10% of the meat market in the world will be a market for meat substitutes, which means a very large market. Their basic premise was that the consumers of this category who will cause this increase will be the so-called flexitarians – people who diversify and meat reducers – who reduce. They did not rely on vegetarians/vegans, but said that there would be additional populations, which in the end did happen in the milk substitutes market, a category that has only been growing since then. But in the meat substitutes it did not happen. I believe it will happen, but not at the rate they predicted. It will take more time. We continued to develop these products, improving them, we have a development team that continues to develop, but we realized that in the end it was limited to a certain percentage of the population that is not growing at the rate they expected it to grow."
According to Zoglubek, there is also an opportunity in everything: "The very fact that I had already established an innovation laboratory in Shlomi with a team of the best researchers, engineers and food technologists, in the end also met the current project. Two years ago we bought a patented technology from a Swedish company and actually established a line for ready meals Inside the Zoglovac production site. A few months ago we produced the Diner series (decomposed meat, sloppy joe and chilled buns) with this technology, and now we have produced the Madame Perez series. We really brought an extraordinary technology and I already had the platform, the innovation laboratory. We took technology and turn it into culinary places. Grandma's kitchen meets advanced innovative technology. It's something very unique and I'm very proud of it."
How complex is it to launch products in the current period?
"I don't know if there is an ideal timing for the launch, there will always be something. Life has taught us that we cannot plan too much. In the end, every innovation has to meet a need. The need to eat home-made, hot, nutritious food at an accessible price is a need that everyone in the population meets When you take the dishes out of the microwave, the feeling is that they have just cooked those meatballs or made the bolognese. Our target audience is basically everyone. I am Madame Perez, you are Madame Perez, and he is Madame Perez. After three decades in this field, I think I have also developed the ability to predict success It happens when the need is real, not some gimmick of extra flavor in a series of products, but innovation that is a game changer, something that comes to change the rules of the game."
"There are no boundaries in a family business"
The fact that due to her connection to Zoglovac, literally, the work also began to come into the home, is quite new to her. "I come from a home of employees. I myself, when I used to finish my work hours, then there was a complete separation between home and work, between career and family. There were very clear boundaries," says Zoglovac. "When it comes to a family business, there are no boundaries. Even long before I officially joined the company, it was impossible to take it out of the house. Eli is a third generation of founders. He was born inside the factory, until the age of 10 he lived with the noise of the machines and the smell of sausages, because the family lived in the factory . You can't disconnect it, it's part of his life, of his being, of who he is. And I, as a partner, also in it. Now, when we work together, it's clear that it accompanies us throughout the day and at home."
how do you feel about that
"Look, it's not easy because the situation of being a food producer is not simple, not easy. There are many challenges in this industry. There is pressure, there is stress, but you have to know how to quantify it, you have to know how much you allow it to rule your life and how much you know Also to set the limit and make the separations. I think we are balanced, know how to make these separations, but it is definitely there and present. It is not something that you can close the door, go into the house and say that's it."
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