Number: CA JMABC A.1971.001-20.18-17
Name: Adam Granot
Interviewer: Debby Freiman
Date: May 28th, 2018
Place: Peretz Center
Project: The Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia Oral History Project

Summary:
00:00: The interviewer, Debby Freiman, introduces herself and Adam Granot who is being interviewed.
00:21: Granot was born in Israel. He then goes on to describe his family and early childhood.
2:45: Granot describes the importance and role food played in his household and while growing up.
4:27: Freiman asks how Granot became involved in the food industry. Granot recounts his father’s career as a restaurant owner in Tel Aviv, Israel while Granot was a child. He then describes his father’s wish to build a business that sells burekas when they moved to Canada. Eventually they purchased the Fraser bakery and named it Breka Bakery which still exists in several locations today.
13:14: Granot was originally working at a car rental agency but left that job in order to take part in the family’s bakery when he was in his early twenties. He also recounts the opening of the other locations.
19:57: Granot is involved with the operations side of the business. His sister, brother-in-law, mother and mother’s partner are all also involved in the business in a variety of capacities. He also describes some of the tenets of the bakery related to product and growth.
25:26: Breka makes a variety of traditional Jewish and Eastern European breads, some of which are in keeping with the tradition of Fraser Bakery.
29:41: The bakeries are open twenty-four seven. Granot describes who the customers are that come in at all hours of the night.
33:18: Granot answers how Judaism has affected the business.
34:46: The speakers discuss the changes that have occurred in the food industry since Breka was first created. They discuss the changes in what customers are looking for in the products they purchase.
38:12: Freiman asks Granot what he sees as the future of Breka. At the time of the interview, Granot was beginning to plan for two more locations to be added to the business. They were also considering to expanding beyond Vancouver itself to other Lower Mainland cities. Granot recounts what he’s learned and what he’s loved about working in the food industry.

Oral History interview with Iris Andrews. Born in 1933, Iris lived in London before moving to Vancouver once war broke out in 1940. Iris’s maternal grandfather was the first in her family to come to Canada, arriving in Vancouver in 1911. He opened a kosher bakery called Mother Hubbard Bakery on the corner of West Broadway. Iris’s maternal grandparents belonged to the Beth Israel congregation prior to the construction of the synagogue on Oak St. Her paternal grandparents were from Balaya Tserkoff, Russia (Now Bila Tserkva, Ukraine). Her paternal grandfather was a soldier in the Russian Army in the calvary before being designated a free man. Iris’s paternal grandparents arrived in England in 1903, where her grandfather began to works as a cigarette maker. Iris lived in Vancouver from 1940-1945 as war evacuee, and later returned to the city with her husband and two children in 1962. Iris was very active in the Jewish community; she was involved with Sisterhood at Beth Israel, she joined the Nordau chapter of Hadassah-WIZO, she worked as a Rabbi Secretary at Beth Israel, and she was on the committee for the Beth Israel museum.

Interview with Ivan and Lynette Buchman. Interviewed by Alysa Routtenberg for The Scribe, 2018. Prior to their immigration to Canada, Ivan and Lynette owned a franchise of 17 bakeries in South Africa named Bread Ahead. In Vancouver, the couple opened their restaurant Enigma, which they ran for 13 years before its sale in 2017. Post-retirement, Ivan and Lynette produce and sell sticky toffee pudding across specialty supermarkets.