The history of Cuisine Innovations begins in 1945, when Pearl Cohen opened a small restaurant in Newark, NJ specializing in kosher style foods. The reputation of Pearl’s food and especially her homemade knishes grew quickly and soon the fast growing restaurant was known as Cohen’s Famous Knishes. The demand for Pearl’s homemade style knishes was so great that her small kitchen soon became a food factory. By 1947 the plant had expanded and become the first USDA kosher plant in the United States. Little did Pearl know that Cohen’s Famous Knishes would start a food trend, which would revolutionize the catering industry.
Throughout the years the business continued to thrive and eventually grew to 7 restaurants. In the early 1970’s the potential growth of the wholesale frozen appetizer business became apparent to Pearl’s two sons, Sidney and Edward, who had been Pearl’s young assistants from the very start of this adventure. The family sold the restaurants and started developing the manufacturing and wholesale activity on a larger scale.
As the business continued to expand Sid Cohen, then the CEO and driving force behind the new generation of products, realized that the business started in Pearl’s kitchen now needed to be run like a modern manufacturing business. The product line was expanded to include innovative and exciting new products, as the company entered the fast growing food service arena.
By 1983, Cohen’s Famous was a major food company with national branded distribution, both at the foodservice as well as the consumer levels, as the Cohen’s brand was now distributed in many supermarkets around the country. In addition the company also produced private label products for the leading food service distributors. In 1997 the Cohen family decided to sell the business. During the next several years, Cohen’s went through a couple of different owners.
In 2004 Cohen’s was purchased by Saveur Food Group (www.saveurfood.com), a company created by entrepreneurs with the same philosophy and focus of quality and innovation, which the Cohen family worked so hard to develop. The name of the new company became Cuisine Innovations. The new management team included a team of managers who would bring the Company back to its origins of a family company and always remember grandmother Pearl’s objective of maintaining the reputation and the quality of Cohen’s products.
The company was restructured and a new era for the Cohen business had begun. Cohen’s was returning to its roots of a business focused exclusively on quality, innovation and service. To achieve these objectives, Cuisine Innovations opened another plant, a new USDA approved state of the art manufacturing facility in Lakewood, NJ. Today, with a unique selection of trend setting and innovative products, Cuisine Innovations is able to fulfill all of its customers needs in all channels of business including restaurants, caterers, hotels, supermarkets and club stores, in both the kosher and non-kosher segments.
Cuisine Innovations’ success has been so great that a new second state of the art manufacturing facility has been built, also in Lakewood, NJ, and opened its doors in June 2006.
Driven by this passion for quality, innovation and unparalleled service, Cuisine Innovations has now become the largest privately held hors d’oeuvres manufacturer in North America.