THE NEW
SALSA
a day on which the average American consumes the caloric equivalent of 20 servings of Utz’s sour
cream and onion dip. For Sabra,
whose red-rimmed tubs of hummus are increasingly found inside
American refrigerators, the stakes
were particularly high.
“People are dipping in Super
Bowl,” Zohar said. “They are looking for what to dip. Unfortunately
they are dipping in the wrong
product. But we try to change
this. And we are doing okay.”
Around Sabra’s offices just outside New York City, employees are
fond of saying that they hope to
put their Middle Eastern chickpea
dip “on every American table.”
Though that mission is far from
achieved, the company is off to an
impressive start. In the last halfdecade, overall sales of hummus
have climbed sharply in the United States, with Sabra capturing
about 60 percent of the market,
according to the Chicago-based
market research firm Information
Resources, Inc. This spring, Sabra
announced an $86 million expansion of its Virginia factory, a move
that the company says will create
140 jobs. Every year, the company
inches closer to its goal of competing with salsa, the longtime
HUFFINGTON
06.30-07.07.13
“I AM VERY HAPPY IF
LEBANON IS GOING
TO FIGHT ABOUT THE
HUMMUS AND NOT
ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE.”
Colossus of the dip industry.
As the company’s leader during
this stretch, Zohar has overseen
a wide-ranging publicity effort
aimed at simultaneously coaxing
Americans to open their minds to
a new taste of foreign origin while
downplaying controversial aspects
of the product’s provenance. In
an age of significant spending by
America’s pro-Israel lobby, even
chickpeas have been swept into
the debate over Israel’s occupation
of Palestinian lands, its attitude
toward its Arab neighbors and its
reliance on American support.
Pro-Palestinian activists have
in recent years organized boycotts
of Sabra’s Israeli parent company, Strauss, for providing care
packages to the Golani Brigade,
a branch of the Israeli army that
has allegedly committed humanrights abuses in the West Bank
and Gaza. Groups in Lebanon
have criticized Sabra for reaping the spoils of what they say is
an intrinsically Lebanese dish. To
quote a saying that has surfaced