Fresh Green Delights, a neighborhood produce and grocery store, takes you straight to Israel, making many native Israelis feel at home.
The small store, located at 10103 Fondren Rd. Suite 118, is becoming popular all over Texas. People from Dallas, San Antonio and Austin come especially to Houston looking for Israeli favorites.
“People are missing tastes and smells of home,” owner Ofir Azran told the JHV. “You can remember the smell of the shampoo from after the army or from your grandmother’s house.”
Azran opened the store two years ago, but originally as a vegetarian, vegan salad bar for the general market.
Like all grocery stores, Fresh Green Delights has been forced to adapt in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Lots of the customers in the store area started working from home, and it affected the store’s income.
Azran thought of ways to keep the business running, so he asked the Israeli community what products they miss having in Houston. The answer led him to bring unique grocery products from Israel and New York, which turned out to be a huge success.
Azran also recognized the needs of the religious community for green vegetables “Goosh Katif” Israel-style.
Step by step, he started distributing the chopped vegetables – from a synagogue to Foodarama and Belden’s.
With lots of support from the Jewish community, Azran decided to open the physical location on Fondren.
This unique store is really all about the ability to bring small pieces from Israel to Houston. Azran keeps on bringing in the products, little by little.
“We love to stand behind our products. We appreciate the communication with the community, asking people what have they thought about it, and if people like it, we will bring in more,” Azran said.
“It is important for me to give a healthy experience to make our clients healthier.”
As you enter the store, you can see that the Israeli selection is large. Bags of Bamba, Bisli and Hebrew Doritos, bottles of flavored Prigat-brand juice, Kariot (nougat creme-filled breakfast cereal) and Osem soup mix, Israeli shampoos, made-in-Israel cleaning supplies (many of Azran’s Israeli customers say that the liquid Landry smell stays longer on your clothes).
Azran really enjoys a manufactory, hands-on kitchen, to be able to make foods fresh for the community. For challah, he makes sure the flour is high quality, dips with no preservatives, organic, sugar-free, all the best fresh kosher products that give the community a healthy experience of shopping and eating.
Customers can smell the fresh challah and the honey cakes in the main entrance of the building. The bakery offers a larger variety of challah, poppy seed, plain, sesame, raisins, filled challah with pesto or garlic or olives, many different kind of baked rugelach muffins, small little squares of chocolate and halvah, kugels and babka.
But, it’s not just Israelis who are taking advantage of Fresh Green Delights’ unique products. Azran said when he first brought a conditioner from Israel, one of his employees asked him about it after seeing so many women buy it. So, she started trying it and has used it ever since.
