INTERVIEW

Fruits

Pesha By

BY ELISHEVA TAITZ

Rachel and Hezi Yazdi are the parents of four and owners of Fruits By Pesha, a boutique business specializing in fresh and dehydrated fruits and vegetables. They are known for their show-stopping platters and the most recent craze — dehydrated marshmallows, affectionately dubbed “Munchmellows.” Fruits by Pesha products, kosher certified by the OK, are available in many retail markets and ship nationwide through Amazon or their website, www.fruitsbypesha.com. Find them on Instagram @fruits_by_pesha. How did you get started with Fruits by Pesha?

Fruits by Pesha fell into our laps in an unexpected way. After years of working in each of our family’s retail businesses, we had to figure out what our next step would be once Hezi’s family’s business closed. For family gatherings and holidays we always offered to bring cut fruit, because fruit is always a crowd pleaser, no matter the age. Over the years we practiced and learned how to make beautiful fruit art arrangements. In June 2017, Hezi sent some pictures to our friends and they persuaded us to open an Instagram account and post our fruit creations — we didn’t even know how Instagram worked at the time! When orders started coming in, we were in such disbelief. After providing fruit platters for our children’s school carnival, we received a call from the school asking us if we were interested in making dehydrated fruit for their Purim mishloach manot packages. We didn’t know the first thing about dehydrating but we were intrigued, so we bought a small dehydrator. After trial and error and lots of feedback from friends and family, we realized we were doing something right. We began production in a small facility in Queens. Once business started picking up, we were able to move to a larger facility in Brooklyn, closer to home. Who is Pesha? When I was in second grade, we had a substitute teacher on Fridays. I was a quiet girl and always sat in the back of the classroom. When the teacher asked my name and couldn’t hear me after multiple attempts, she ended up calling me Pesha Baila, which of course is not my real name at all! It became a pseudonym of sorts and what I ended up using for my social media accounts. When Hezi asked me what to call our new business venture, I jokingly said Fruits by Pesha, which stuck! What is involved in the dehydrating process and how long does it take? The process is very long. First we have to thoroughly wash and peel the fruit. Then we slice and arrange it on trays to go into the dehydrators. At that point, it’s a waiting game. Some items take 14-18 hours to dehydrate and others take 20+ hours. It’s a long process but is so worth the wait to enjoy the fruits of our labor — literally! What is the hardest product to produce?

Grapes are one of the hardest fruits to dehydrate, clocking in at about 28-36 hours. Strawberries are also difficult, mainly because of the cleaning process to prepare them for dehydration. People also don’t realize how much the fruit shrinks during dehydration. For instance, a 2-pound watermelon will become a mere 2 ounces of fruit after dehydration. An average 12-inch platter contains about 1 pound of dehydrated fruit, which was once about 10-12 pounds of fresh fruit! How does dehydrated fruit differ from the classic category of dried fruit?

Dried fruit has added sugar, sulfates and other preservatives to enhance freshness. Fruits by Pesha products have no additives whatsoever. People tend to prefer our dehydrated fruit over dried fruit. It’s healthier, more satisfying and all-natural. One ingredient — truly Hashem’s candy. What are your most popular items? Pineapple, watermelon and mango are our biggest sellers. We also do special orders based on customer’s requests. Right now people are going crazy for our dehydrated marshmallows, aka Munchmellows. Have you had any products that failed?

In the beginning, it took a lot of experimentation to figure out the right temperatures and times; we ended up with a lot of waste. Every fruit is different (even two of the same fruit can dehydrate at different rates based on the level of ripeness) and every machine is different. Weather and humidity play a big role as well. Sometimes we suffer a loss and throw things out, but we are (still!) learning as we go. For example, avocado does NOT work well in the dehydrator! We work very hard on our quality control to make sure we only put out products that we would feed to our own family. Our backgrounds in retail were all about selling things that were created by others. Now we get to sell things that we helped create and we love it.

How many products do you currently offer? We offer a huge variety of fruits and vegetables, both fresh and dehydrated. We also have cold-pressed juices, Munchmellow dehydrated marshmallows and chocolate covered fruit as well. We are always experimenting and playing around with new things so our product line is never complete! The sky’s the limit. Do you enjoy working together? Truthfully, we are opposites in a lot of ways, but it works. We push each other when we need to get things done. We both have unique ways of doing things and Fruits by Pesha has brought us closer together. Even our kids love getting involved. We were both raised in family-owned businesses and although it was not planned, we are so proud to have created our own for our kids to be proud of. When is your busiest season? All the holidays are busy, but Pesach is the busiest holiday for us since there is not much variety to choose from for Pesach. It’s the one holiday where almost everything has to be made from scratch. We were surprised to learn how many people have been dehydrating their own fruit just for Pesach. Since it’s such a daunting process, we’ve been told by some customers how much easier it is to have our products available, saving them from the hassle of doing it themselves. The washing, peeling, cutting and then waiting hours or days to get such a tiny yield is a lot of hard work. We also get a huge influx of fresh platter orders for Pesach. The last thing you need after a long Seder is a heavy dessert; cut fruit is also the perfect snack to have on hand for Chol Hamoed outings. What is some of the best feedback you’ve gotten about your products? People of all ages love our dehydrated fruit and never miss a chance to show us gratitude for creating such a convenient product to have on hand. We have repeat customers who are always raving about our fruits and new customers only have amazing things to say. We have grown so much just by word of mouth. The best is when we get videos, especially of children, telling us how much they love eating our fruit. Kids always tell the truth if they love something or not! I’d like to think that our products truly make people happy.