Mass. woman packages 'high-end' kosher treats in gift set start-up company

Rachel Perdue has been on flights like this - she requests a kosher meal well in advance, and while her seatmates nosh on steamy plates of lasagna, a stewardess dumps a dry piece of matzo on her tray.

"Nobody cares," she sighed. "If you eat kosher, you have to eat kosher, so why should they care about packaging?"

But as someone with a rich creative and spiritual background, Perdue cared - enough to start a company, Wild Pomegranate, designing and selling high-end kosher gift packages.

And with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, days away, Perdue has already tasted 20 kosher honeys to find the perfect one to package in artsy boxes for her orders.

Who knew schmear could be so stylish? But it was a natural harmony for Perdue, 35, a University Road resident, who said she was just tired of kosher food services snubbing presentation.

"I didn't want to get gimmicky, but I wanted to be practical and really just take it to the year 2007," she said. "A lot of kosher products are blue and white and they've got Stars of David on it, and we don't have to eat like that because we're kosher."

Well, wait - what do you mean, "like that?"

"It doesn't have to be dumpy or frumpy. It should be stylish or beautiful," the Brooklyn native said, recounting how trips to many kosher markets are like entering a time warp into the 1940s.

"We just don't have to settle for less because we're kosher," she said.

Every delicately decorated trinket may not suit everyone's taste or tradition, she acknowledged, but Purdue said her goal is to have at least one item in a package that would appeal and be acceptable to anyone.

"We're catering to all Jews on the spectrum because I have a Hasidic family, and I want to be able to send something, so I keep them in mind when I designing boxes," said Perdue, who still keeps kosher, but no longer considers herself a Hasidic Jew.

As the company celebrates its first birthday, Perdue recalled what first got the wheels in her head turning.

"It all started when my parents got a kosher gift basket from one of their friends, and it was stale food and the stuff was kind of gross and what you'd just get at the market," she said. "There are a ton of [high-end] kosher products out there. They just have to be scouted."

Lucky that someone is doing the scouting for Norah Mazar.

Mazar, 35, a Centre Street resident and longtime friend of Perdue's, couldn't make it to her grandmother's New York City Rosh Hashana celebration and, instead, sent a package of Wild Pomegranate delicacies.

"She said it was so beautiful, she didn't even open it," Mazar laughed. "It didn't quite make up for not being together, but it really made her happy."

Mazar said she has also called upon her friend's business when bringing a hostess gift to a Friday night Shabbat dinner.

"It's not hard to find a kosher gift package, but so much of it is so banal and so boring. It's all blue and white, all Stars of David. It's so cliché," she said. "And everything Rachel touches turns to gold."

Like everything about the company, its name is a blend of tradition and panache.

"Pomegranates - they're mystical fruits and supposedly have 613 seeds in them for the 613 commandments in the Torah," Perdue said. "And I used to be Hasidic, and now that I'm sort of doing my own thing, I'm sort of the wild child, [though] Judaism is near and dear to my heart."

Lined up on the Web site for Wild Pomegranate are Rosh Hashana-themed treats, ranging from $20 to $60 - apple-and-honey-filled cookies; Japanese-paper wrapped Yahrzeit candles; and passion fruit- and banana nutmeg-flavored chocolate bon bons, in honor of the holiday's tradition to eat new fruit.

For Hanukkah, she plans to give a nod to the miracle of oils by selling olive oil-infusing kits with earthy herbs.

"There's always been something in me that wanted to make it prettier," said Perdue, who spent years as a professional painter and sculptor before devoting herself to her company full time. "I want people to feel like … opening the box is an experience."

For more information about Wild Pomegranate, visit www.wildpom.com.

Jessica Scarpati of the Brookline (Mass.) TAB can be reached at jscarpat@cnc.com.