Amy Zitelman is the co-founder and CEO of the premium tahini brand, Soom Foods. She graduated from the University of Delaware with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication in 2011 and spent the following year soaking up Israeli culture and teaching English in Israel. She has been talkin’ tahini since January 2013. Amy was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2018 List for the Food and Drink category and she is author of The Tahini Table, Go Beyond Hummus with 100 Recipes for Every Meal and in Between.
She started Soom Foods with her two sisters as she was graduating from college with a mission to make tahini a more popular ingredient in the United States. They made their first sale in May of 2013 and she spent the following many years traveling the country selling tahini to restaurants and independent markets. They expanded into Whole Foods in the Mid Atlantic region in 2018 and went National with them in May of 2022. Now Soom is sold to restaurants in over 40 states and is sold in around 3500 stores!
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Susan Kleiner: Hello and welcome to the Think Factory where we speak with industry leaders and learn about pressing industry issues as well as their secrets to success. My name is Susan Kleiner. I’m a partner with Outside General Counsel Solutions and I’m the host of today’s Think Factory episode.
I’m so happy to have with me here today, Amy Zitelman. Amy is the co-founder and CEO of Soom Foods, the leading purveyor of tahini and tahini products in the US market. Soom Foods is the preferred tahini of award-winning chefs and home cooks across the country, the top tahini brand in Whole Foods Market and on Amazon and has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Forbes, Bon Appetit, Food and Wine and more.
Soom Foods is based in Philadelphia and she lives in the area. She received the prestigious Philadelphia Business Journal Women of Vision Award in 2024 and she’s a proud University of Delaware graduate. Thank you, Amy, so much for being here with me today.
Amy Zitelman: Hi, thanks for having me.
Susan Kleiner: . Yeah, so like tahini is great, you know, and obviously I think you could talk for a long time about tahini, but I wanna talk to you about your business and about your company.
And in learning about you, two things really stuck out for me. One, that you’re a successful family business where everyone still gets along, which I’d love to hear more about. And two, about how COVID actually helped your company grow and how you were able to turn COVID into a really positive experience. So with that, I mean, I’d love to hear from you. Tell me about the business, tell me about your family.
Amy Zitelman: Sure, well, if I may just to describe tahini because most people still don’t know what tahini is. It’s really the mission that we’ve set out to overcome.
But tahini, for those of you not familiar, is an ingredient. It’s made from 100% roasted and pressed sesame seeds, and it’s very versatile for savory and sweet dishes, but it’s probably most familiar in the American market because we use it to make hummus. And in fact, the secret to good hummus is good tahini.
And so I come from a family that loves food. Actually, what’s interesting as I had the opportunity to explore is that I come from a family of food entrepreneurs. So while culinary is not the forward mission of what shaped us, and to assume my sisters and me, my father’s father had a restaurant in Washington, DC. My mother’s father was a butcher. My father’s grandparents had a store in Baltimore when they immigrated from Russia. And so I found it really interesting that we have a history of food entrepreneurship, and quite frankly, entrepreneurship in general.
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