West Bridgewater, MA – Kosher Food Distributor Closes Without Warning

West Bridgewater, MA – SWB New England one of the largest kosher meat suppliers in New England, closed suddenly.

Employees at the company were told that they should look for new jobs or apply for unemployment, and the doors at SWB were closed and deliveries ceased.

"It was so sudden," said an SWB employee, who wished to remain anonymous. "They gave us no warning. A lot of the employees are very upset."

"I am not surprised this happened," said Josh Davis, owner of Davis Dairy in Providence, R.I., which is now the only kosher distributor in New England. "I knew this was coming. It seems like SWB was struggling for a long time."

Meanwhile, the Butcherie in Brookline said it won't be severely affected by the closing. "It will be more of an inconvenience for us," said Walter Gellerman of the Butcherie. "We found out about the closing via word of mouth, but over the years we have stopped ordering from SWB. Lately, they have become more of an ethnic food distributor, and not so much of a kosher distributor. We already have shifted our focus to buy from other suppliers."

"Sometimes I would see little things here and there that weren't right with SWB," Gellerman added. "I don't know why they shut down, but it seems as though they were keeping a lot of what was going on secret." [jewishadvocate]