Support Mort & Betty's New Kitchen

Hi! I'm Megan and Mort & Betty's is my passion project / side hustle turned full-time gig, a vegan Jewish deli where my team and I make everything from scratch. We celebrate local seasonal produce with our smoked carrot lox, corned beets, mushroom pastrami, white carrot whitefish and more!

Mort & Betty's is a pop-up deli and bakery. We vend at farmers markets and events, sell wholesale to retail shops and cafes, offer special catering menus for all the holidays, and create custom catering menus for private events. We have a range of retail products: vegetable delicatessen, cultured cashew schmears, probiotic pickles & krauts, fresh baked goods, and a few miscellaneous items.

Since I started the business in 2018, we've been cooking in shared commercial kitchens where you pay by-the-hour, generally pre-paying for a certain number of hours per month. This format has served our needs pretty well, especially when we first started. Over the past few months I've worked to grow our wholesale accounts and realized we've outgrown this production model.

Why not just open a brick and mortar deli?

With Los Angeles restaurants closing every week, including well established vegan restaurants, now is not the time for us to open a brick and mortar shop. But, having a production kitchen does not mean we'll never have a storefront. In fact, having our own production kitchen actually brings us a step closer to being able to operate a brick and mortar deli / bakery. Even if now were the time, since we make everything from scratch, it would be challenging to find a restaurant space in Los Angeles that could fit all the front-of house items we'd need: service counter, seating, a deli case, and a bakery case, while having enough space in the back-of-house for both production and making plates to order.

Most Los Angeles restaurant kitchens are pretty small -- you might be surprised how many from-scratch restaurants do some production in a separate kitchen. Those that don't are typically only open for dinner. Having a separate production kitchen reduces the amount of back-of-house space needed in a storefront. Although it's not a focus right now, it will make it easier to find the right space when that day comes!

What will the new kitchen allow us to do?

kosher certification

Working in a shared kitchen setting, pursuing Kosher Certification was never a possibility. After the new kitchen is set up, I will reach out to rabbinic agencies and begin the certification process.

nationwide shipping

This is a big one that so many folks have asked for! Our production schedule has always been geared towards weekend delivery, events, and markets, but the best days to ship perishable items are Mondays and Tuesdays. Adding extra kitchen time to fulfill a couple shipping orders didn't make sense in the by-the-hour kitchen model. With our own kitchen, we'll start with shipping once per month and see if there's demand for more.

on-demand-delivery

Having our own space, we can add delivery for entrees, sandwiches, salads, soups, pastries and our packaged items. To start, we'll offer delivery while we're in the kitchen during our production shifts. From there we'll see if there's demand to add more days and times.

year round hamantaschen

This might seem like a funny thing to list, but iykyk! Because our hamantaschen are so labor intensive, currently we make them exclusively for Purim. Folks ask for them at other times but they're tricky to fit into a tight production schedule. We'll add at one flavor to our pre-order menu beginning in January!

more time for R&D + ferments

I have a list of items I haven't had the opportunity to fully R&D. Typically a recipe will start in my home kitchen. After a couple tests I make it while we are doing our regular weekly production. But if we have a busy week it's hard to fit in the recipe testing. I am excited to have more time in the kitchen to finish testing seven layer cake, cheesecake, blintzes, and kugel variations. I also want to spend more time making pickles, krauts, and other natually fermented items.

additional farmers' markets

My goal is to add a Thursday, Friday and Saturday farmers' market to our weekly schedule, with a priority to be on the West Side in at least one of these markets.

more accessible catering

We love catering your events! The by-the-hour kitchen model has made our catering out of many folks budget. In our own kitchen, I'm excited to look at our catering pricing and see where I can make our options more competitively priced.

& more

The items listed above are the goals we're going to achieve in 2025. Beyond that, I'm confident working from our own production kitchen opens the doors of opportunity. There are so many possibilities I don't have the ability to see from where I'm currently standing, but with freedom that comes from designing one's space and schedule I believe it will all come into focus.

More About Mort & Betty's

If you're new here, thank you so much for helping us move to the next phase of the business. Here's a little more background about my family and how I started Mort & Betty's.

Mort & Betty

Betty (Bethel Kotzen) and Morten Sobel were my maternal grandparents. Both their families fled antisemitic pogroms in Lithuania in the 1880's and 1890's, sailed to the US, and came through Ellis Island. Betty (1912-1998) was born and raised in The Bronx. Mort (1912 - 1980) was born in NYC and raised in Newark, NJ. They met while working at a Jewish summer resort in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, not far from Easton where they later resided and raised their four children, including my mom, Audrey Jane.

Betty had a degree in accounting. She worked for the Easton public school district and City of Easton as an accountant and controller. Betty ran for Easton city council several times, but didn't get elected. She played the piano, loved classical music and jazz, dogs and Chinese food. I spent a lot of time with Betty when I was a child. She taught me to make matzo ball soup and fried egg with onion.

Mort went to NYU on a football scholarship and graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering. During WW2, he converted a Wurlitzer piano factory into an airplane factory for the Navy. His company, Sobel Industries, made molds for plastics and tin, including Crayola watercolors tins and plastic Dixie Cups. He patented several designs, including the gravity-fed paper Dixie Cup dispenser. Sadly, Mort passed away before I was born. In the Jewish tradition, babies are often named after a loved one using the first letter of their name. My parents chose to give me the name Megan in his honor.

Mort & Betty's

I grew up in the Philly suburbs. I have a BA in religious studies with minors in nutrition and anthropology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a culinary degree from the Culinary Institute of America. I've always worked with food. My first job was in a bakery at age 14. I've also worked in delis, grocery stores, restaurants, hotels, and catering. I've been vegan since 2013.

In 2017 while working at Whole Foods Market as a Prepared Foods Coordinator for the Southern Pacific Region I wanted to create a vegan popup concept, but I wasn't sure what type of cuisine I wanted to focus on. One day, while R&Ding a beet pepperoni recipe for the pizza program at work I realized with different spices it could be CORNED BEETS! And in that same moment I knew I needed to veganize the Jewish deli and name it after my grandparents.

It took a lot longer than I expected to go from that lightbulb moment to the first pop-up. Five months before I planned to launch the business my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and passed away a month later. It was a shock to my family and the community where I grew up. My mom was the director of Family Service Association of Bucks County. She was a dedicated public servant, having worked for that organization for 40 years.

The first Mort & Betty's pop-up was in front of Block Party, on York Blvd in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles on 11/11/2018, on what would have been my mom's 74th birthday. Her tenacity and leadership continue to inspire my work.