RIP to David Mintz, the Inventor of Tofutti

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Tofutti changed the world’s frozen-dessert landscape as a popular sweet for vegans and those keeping Kosher. hughmerwin remembers its inventor, David Mintz

Photo: Julio Cortez/AP/Shutterstock David Mintz’s life changed in 1972, in a basement kitchen in Chinatown, where cooks transformed fresh soy milk into soft tofu for neighborhood dim sum parlors. After they determined that the enthusiastic, 40-something Jewish New Yorker wasn’t a city health department inspector, the cooks agreed to sell him a gallon.

Mintz was born June 8, 1931, the son of a Williamsburg bread baker, and grew up in the neighborhood’s Orthodox Jewish community. After a brief stint selling mink stoles, he opened shops that sold prepared foods. One ingenious ploy involved Mintz’s promotion of the Jewish grandmothers he’d recruited in place of line cooks to prepare the most comforting foods: stuffed cabbage, fat knishes, perfectly rolled rugelach. The babushka strategy attracted long lines, Orthodox and not.

The market for Tofutti may have started with observant Jews — Mintz even sought guidance from Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, the venerated Orthodox Jewish leader — but it soon expanded to include the lactose intolerant, fad dieters, suburban vegetarians, and parents anxious to get their kids to eat plants on the sly.

As his business grew, so too did Mintz’s ambition, and even as he’d casually suggest the idea of garlic Tofutti, he could also outline a plan for the Future of Food that has since been floated in countless Silicon Valley start-up pitches: a world of meatless burgers, vegan cheeses, and environmentally responsible protein sources.

 

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hughmerwin His brother was the principal of my high school Yeshiva. I remember clearly when Tofutti was born. I was a freshman and it was all everyone could talk about. May his memory be a blessing.

hughmerwin

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