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Comment by sdze | Hacker News Reader

It was just an idea...

I know, I asked to try and understand the rationale behind it.

Rather than "most people in the UK" it could be a "what's the most universally accepted product across the globe"?

There are several major products that are Kosher or Halal despite the biggest market being the West. Snapple Ice Tea is a good example of a Kosher product.

The only rationale I can think of is if you are going to mass produce some food product, better to start with something you can sell everywhere, than start with a Western version and then change (or add to) your product line later.

> There are several major products that are Kosher or Halal despite the biggest market being the West. Snapple Ice Tea is a good example of a Kosher product.

There are a lot of products that are by default Kosher and Halal and just added the sticker on top for advertising. What could you add to Ice Tea to make it not kosher other than preparing it in non-kosher equipment (which is possible, but unlikely in the case of ice tea)

Sure but for Snapple, it’s kosher certified. So the company went through the trouble to get it approved. I do agree that tea is probably easier to get certified, but it takes extra effort to get that status.

It’s still not the case that Snapple started off with something kosher to grab the market share. It just happens that they had a product that is easy to certify. The effort was likely small compared to the advertising benefit.

Right, but that's my point. If I were to launch a new product and I had the choice between ingredient A and ingredient B, and ingredient A meant I could get an easy kosher certificate, why not choose A?

I feel the same about "extra effort". When I lived in New York City, many vegetarian restaurants would go out of their way to get kosher and halal certified (by conservative clerics). The owners would prominantly display the certificate at the entrance, plus the menu would share the same information. In my view it was two things: (1) virtue signalling (fine by me), and (2) appeal to a more customers who might not "naturally" be vegetarian. I knew many Orthodox Jews at my office. If their favourite Jewish Kosher lunch/dinner place was closed, they would check for kosher veg options.

This is a good point too. Kosher and Halal have an appeal beyond just the religious. The standards for those certifications also points to a certain quality you might not otherwise get.

Nice point: I would find it hard to believe that any cleric would certify Kosher / Halal for a dirty, low quality, hole-in-the wall.

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