On Today’s episode: Nate sits down with Naftaly Stramer and Ofer Sivan, the founders of Oasis Street Food and Falafel Restaurant, the Iowa City staple serving and distributing Mediterranean food throughout the state since 2004.
Naftaly and Ofer share their early experiences with Mediterranean food and how it inspired them to bring better experiences to the midwest. They also discuss the ad hoc origins of Oasis, how they have found success by identifying needs, and how they think about their partnership and the future of their business.
I learned a lot, and I think you will too.
Sponsored by MidWestOne Bank, this is the latest edition of the CBJ’s new podcast feature with Nate Kaeding and notable Iowa business and cultural leaders, available first to CBJ members. Listen to this episode below, and subscribe on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher.
Nate Kaeding: What are your early memories of Mediterranean food or hummus or falafel? How did you get introduced to this food?
Naftaly Stramer: I was born in Israel in 1955, so I’m an old guy. Israel is made up of two types of people: Ones that came from Africa, the northern part, and then some who came from Europe after the Holocaust. My parents are from Poland, so the Middle Eastern food wasn’t in my house. It started in the food at school. For example, I don’t eat tomatoes and the lady at the school knew that I didn’t eat tomatoes. So when there were falafel days, she used to make a pita for me with some hummus and some falafel. Then eventually I went into the Army. I didn’t like hummus much until I went into the Army. I didn’t eat too many things, but I realized that if I didn’t eat hummus, I would probably die from hunger.
Ofer Sivan: I was born in Israel too, but I actually moved to Iowa City when I was three. My mom grew up in Iowa City and, when I was a kid, I was a pretty picky eater, but I’d go back to Israel and I would eat falafel. You just couldn’t get it here in Iowa City in the ‘80s. But then I moved to Chicago as a kid and there was falafel there. It was so bad.
Naftaly, you grew up eating at these amazing shacks in Israel, but your falafel in Chicago was so horrible, Ofer. How would you describe the difference between those two experiences?
Ofer: Well, it’s a street food, right? So there’s typically not a restaurant with seating. It’s a window. It’s maybe even almost just a table. But some places they’ll be on the corner and you just take your falafel and go to town on the salads. The temperate climate means it’s always fresh veggies, and it’s a small country. It couldn’t come from more than a hundred miles away, 200 miles max. It’s healthy and just tasty. When we opened Oasis, I was sitting on the steps to the basement inhaling a sandwich. It tasted really good and my brain added the diesel fumes because Tel Aviv is big city with a lot of buses. So when I ate the falafel, the smell came and took me back. I was like, “Oh, we got it. This tastes right.”
Naftaly: When we started talking about doing falafel, we took a recipe and we went to Ofer’s dad’s house, who unfortunately is no longer alive, and we invited all of our Israeli friends over. Israelis know how to criticize. So that was the whole idea. Our first balls just disintegrated in the oil. I remember my wife looked at me and she said “Are you serious? Do you really want to do this?” But I said, “No, no, no. We’ll try again and try again.” And finally we did it.
What was it like as you two tried to bring this product to market?
Naftaly: We wanted to do it in the arts festival. We said, “Oh, that’s a great place for people to taste our food and let us know if it’s good or not.” So we applied and then they told us, “You need to get a license from the Health Department.” We were thinking of just cooking it in my house, but they said, “No, no, no. You need to have a certified kitchen.” We were pretty naive. Then I realized the Jewish student organization here has a kitchen because they do Shabbat dinner for the students. So I went to the director and I said, “Can I use your kitchen for this festival?” He said, “Yeah, but we are a private kitchen. We’re not licensed.” So I said I would license it.
Was it named Oasis right out of the gate?
Ofer: Oasis is such a generic name, but my brother’s friend, who is a graphic designer and worked for George Lucas and Sony, is really an amazing guy. He developed this logo and just as soon as we saw it, we were like “That’s it. It’s Oasis.”
So the first day at the festival, it sold out. Was there an element of educating the locals on this style of food?
Ofer: People were ready for it. I think we were well-timed. Those lucky people knew what it was and Iowa City deserved a falafel place by then. Less people knew about it then compared to how it is now, but it wasn’t so bad.
So that was your proof of concept. Then what? Was it time for you to open a restaurant?
Ofer: We did the Jazz Festival a month later.
Naftaly: The first time, people would say “Oh, you should open a restaurant,” and we would say that we were trying to, but we didn’t have a space. But by JazzFest, we already had. So that was a good advertisement and people were excited.
Tell us about what it was like to open the restaurant.
Ofer: It was a diner before that, so some of the big investments were already there and that was lucky and smart. I don’t think we realized how smart that was. We really didn’t do a lot. I mean, we did as little as we could. We made some changes. I don’t even know why we did it because we had no idea what we were doing. But it was fun. It was an exciting time. I think we took over the place on the first of July and we basically were open by October.
Naftaly: We were thinking that we could do it in a month, but of course nothing works in a month. I remember my wife told me “What are you doing with all of those spreadsheets? You’re going to open a restaurant.” It’s money and if you don’t have it, you are out. One thing we didn’t know was how to actually run this thing. How is the food coming? So we hired some people that knew Sysco and US Foods and how to order and where to order. It gave us the time to do our menu.
Ofer: I’m just marveling at how little I knew. I was 26. I’d had a few jobs and a college degree.
Naftaly: One thing that I say to people is that you don’t know everything and you should ask for help. Some people have too much pride and say, “I know best and I know my food and I know this,” and they will not ask for help. We asked for help and they knew everybody in town. That was really helpful in the beginning. You can ask for help and not be ashamed.
Was the response pretty immediate?
Ofer: I think people were excited right away, and I think we’re really lucky for that. It does seem like it just caught on. That’s how I remember it. I think back to that moment of sitting, like I said, in the stairwell. I imagined these diesel fumes and it tasted like home. It just seemed like a good idea. It tastes good, it’s cheap, it’s healthy, it’s pretty environmentally sound, and it’s right here on the north side.
Tell us how hummus distribution entered into your business.
Ofer: Pretty much right after we opened, six customers come to us and say, “Why don’t you package it or sell it at the co-op or sell it at Hy-Vee?” We thought that was a pretty good idea. So we talked to the health department and they said, “Just put a label with your address and whatever.”
Naftaly: Everybody was very helpful at the Health Department here.
Ofer: So the first store we went to was the Hy-Vee on North Dodge and they were great. The first order was maybe 12 containers? A dozen?
Naftaly: Six, maybe? Then we came up with this idea of having those bags. We would have a four ounce of hummus and a four ounce of Mediterranean salad and the pita bread. Then we thought, “This can be a great hit. The university is here. Let’s sell it to the students.” So I went to the IMU department. I said, “Barry, can we sell it here?” They had 10 or 12 coffee shops all over the university. He said, “You know, you came up exactly at the right time. We got a lot of complaints from parents that we don’t have good food. It’s not healthy enough.”
We started putting it on the shelves and it worked like crazy. People loved it. We ended up opening four of those cafés ourselves in the university, which we don’t have anymore because it was not our main business and we shut them down. But they were a great thing that helped us.
So how did your production and distribution grow?
Ofer: So we were making it at the restaurant. From that point, it just grew and grew and grew. Then we were in all the Hy-Vees in town. At one point, Waterfront Hy-Vee said, “We want 150 containers twice a week on consignment.” So I said, “Yeah, I’ll bring it, but I can’t give you consignment. We’re done with that.” They said fine! It just kept going and going and going. Then we bought a refrigerated truck, and then we bought a second one, and then we bought a third one. We were making hummus seven days a week at the restaurant. We’d start at 3 a.m. There’s an urban myth that we used to make it in the basement and, just to clarify, that’s not true. We’ve never made hummus in the basement.
Naftaly: You’re not allowed to do food in the basement.
What’s the shelf life of hummus? Does it have to be refrigerated the entire time?
Ofer: Yeah, it’s very sensitive, especially without preservatives. We put a 16-day sell-by date and depending on how you treat it, it might get some mold on it around 20 days, but it will go stale and taste bad before it’s actually really bad. That’s part of the appeal, you know what I mean? It’s a natural food that we made in the kitchen and then it went bad.
Where do you produce it now?
Ofer: So now we make it outside of town near Kalona and we have a dedicated room there. It’s an FDA facility and it’s kosher. We have all the licenses and stuff. We make a couple tons a week and we always need more. It’s a challenge because we were making it at the restaurant and distributing it ourselves and business was great, but it wasn’t really sustainable because we wouldn’t be able to, for example, be in Costco with a county health license. So going to a bigger manufacturing setting enabled us to go to Hy-Vee central distribution. But there are distributors. We don’t have our own trucks and that started to eat away at our profit and it’s more of a hustle now than it was when we were little because the margins are smaller.
How do you manage goals within your business and within your partnership?
Naftaly: It’s more the formula that we need. We see the demand and then we decide to do it. I’ll be 69 in September. [Ofer] is almost half of my age. But it worked. We listen to each other, we work with each other, and we trust each other.
Ofer: It’s been 20 years and it’s been pretty ad hoc — not the way an MBA would want to see it done. Now we are actually trying to build those systems and stuff, and it’s a challenge because it’s complicated.
Naftaly: We split responsibilities by the strength of each one of us. I was doing more of the accounting and the spreadsheets. He knew people in town building stuff, all the mechanics behind it, things like that which I’m not good at. So somehow there was a split of responsibilities and each one of us knew what the other was doing. Now we have a general manager who was with us almost from day one and the operation manager that basically runs the place, giving us the opportunity to concentrate on the distribution and manufacturing and everything.
On this season of the podcast, we’re exploring the generations within businesses. Since you mentioned your age difference, has there been a discussion around the future of the business or any sort of transition?
Naftaly: I have three boys and none of them live in Iowa City. None of them want to go into the restaurant business. I ask them, believe me. So yeah, we need to think about what’s next. It’s not an easy decision to start thinking about this.
Ofer: I mean, we are still, in a way, actually recovering from COVID, surprisingly. So we’re trying to return to full profitability and I think any business owner listening to this podcast will agree: If you’re not going to sell it, make some money. Then, if you’re making money, who cares if you sell it or not? So that’s where we’re trying to get to. Zach and Sarah are our manager and our operation manager. They’ve been with us a long time. They’re the future. They’ve got a great crew. The communication’s awesome. It’s fun. That’s really gratifying.
