Baking more than 50 years

Meir Beigel was founded 50 years ago in Ramat Hasharon, when two old friends hailing from Poland, Meir Brin and Arie Bagel, decided to start a business together. In 1963, the first Grissini breadsticks in the world came into being. Two years later the bakery launched a line of salty pretzel sticks. Over time, the original bakery grew and flourished, and its place in the market was stable despite zero advertising effort having been made. As their children were not involved in the enterprise, Aryeh and Meir ran the business themselves for some years.

In 1999, Ari passed away and Meir fell ill, so the enterprise was managed by a distribution company that belonged to Meir Beigel. Before long, the company was in serious trouble. Business slowed and the plant faced closure until about a year later, when Gilad Zilberberg stepped up to the plate. Zilberberg knew Meir and Aryeh from having worked with them as a sales manager in a packaging company. At the beginning of the year, once 11 factory employees had already received letters of dismissal due to the grim state of affairs, the purchase agreement for the company was signed with Zilberberg, and he became the owner of the Meir Beigel factory. He was able to set the company back in business eight months later. Today the company is the number 3 player in the baked snack category in Israel and sells baked snacks all over the glob.