By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Steve Bernstein

In 1997, Steve Bernstein decided to make over his restaurant, Uptown Deli, into a kosher grocery, in addition to his catering business, Bernstein’s Fine Catering. Eleven years later, he has seen his catering business go through the roof. Sales in the grocery — which has never been profitable — have continued to decline.

Because of the increasing demands for catering and the availability of retail kosher food at other outlets, Bernstein will close his grocery on Friday, Jan. 30.

“We need to expand the catering footprint and if we stay in this building, the only place we can do it is in the retail area,” he said.

His center of operations is at Randolph Plaza in Clayton.

“The kosher grocery was a service,” he said, “because there was nothing else available in Dayton at that time. That was before Trader Joe’s and before the bigger grocery stores decided that kosher was a viable product. The decision was not made easily, because of the relationship we have with our many regular customers and friends.”

Bernstein said his catering business is experiencing the most growth in its 20-year history.

“You hate to say it loudly in this day and age,” he said, “but we’re having the best year we’ve ever had. Lots of corporate work.”

Forty percent of his catering orders are for kosher meals.

“One of the reasons we need more catering space is to put in our own kosher kitchen, besides our everyday kitchen,” he said. “It will be so much easier for us to do many of these small requests for kosher. We can just have the mashgiach (kosher supervisor) come to us instead of carrying everything else to another facility, plus travel time and the packing up time; it’ll be easier just to have our own.”