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Coffee Elite recently launched the "Israeli series" - a series of special and limited edition coffee capsules in collaboration with three coffee shops that were affected by the war, "Coffee in the Round" from Shaar HaNegev, Oryosss Coffee from Kibbutz Erez and "On the Border Coffee and Tabon" from Moshav Shtula in the north.
The capsules are inspired by the coffee blends of the coffee shops, where the stories of the coffee shops and their owners are shown on the front of the series packaging.
10% of the proceeds of the edition will be transferred to the restoration of the cafes.
For Ziv Levy, manager of the Strauss coffee factory where the capsules were produced, the connection to this project was particularly exciting.
Levy lost his sister, the late Livnat Kotz, who was murdered in her home in Kfar Gaza with her husband, Aviv, and their three children, Rotem, Yonatan, and Petah, in the terrorist attack on Black Sabbath.
Their bodies were found hugged together in the MMD.
The owner of "Coffee in the Round" who participates in the project is Hagai Horvitz, a resident of Kfar Gaza. Levy says: "I knew the cafe, I happened to be in the area quite a bit, but I didn't know Hagai himself before," he says Levy. "In the end, the meeting on the topic of coffee suddenly opened up all kinds of interface points we had and we learned about each other.
"I got to know through conversations with Hagai, my niece used to work at his cafe. When we met, the first thing he said was: 'Wow, how much you look like Livnat.' A completely exciting event."
"I'm already looking forward to entering the field with a new coffee cart and going back to work," says Horvitz, an agronomist by profession, who two years ago fulfilled a kind of childhood dream and opened "Coffee on a Round" in the Black Arrow monument.
On October 7, the place was burned and looted by Hamas terrorists.
"I was contacted by Strauss, it's a welcome initiative, and we moved forward with it," he says.
"I'm looking for any anchor to hold on to. Beyond the financial aspect, their desire to help warms my heart. They attached Zion Cohen, Strauss Coffee's chief technologist, to me. We had conversations about the composition of the coffee, we tried to reach the right extraction, the right blend. I think we definitely arrived The taste is quite close to the coffee I had in the cafe."
Memory through action and industry/ShutterStock
uncertainty
According to him, he knows the Kotz family quite well.
"Aviv's parents and my parents were core members who came to the kibbutz. Rotem worked at my cafe for several months. In a conversation with Ziv we discussed this point, and it was definitely exciting," says Horvitz, who these days lives in Kibbutz Shafim together with the Kfar Gaza community.
"This is a period of a lot of uncertainty. I don't know when I'll return home, where the children will grow up, where the livelihood will be. On the one hand, I really want to move things, on the other hand, it's not easy. I'm already waiting for the day when I can sell the coffee again and meet the residents."
Levy has been working at Strauss for 11 years.
For the past year and a half, he has been managing the coffee factory in Lod.
The factory was established in the late 1950s as a factory for coffee substitutes, and after its purchase by Elite, it started producing the well-known Turkish coffee.
After the merger in the 1990s with the Strauss company, the factory developed and grew, and 10 years ago it also began producing capsules, with all the production processes taking place inside the small, old building - starting with the roasting, grinding and packaging stages.
The coffee beans come to the factory from 17 countries.
About 450,000 bags of coffee are produced every day, which is about 8 million cups of coffee.
In addition, 480 capsules are produced every minute, and in total the factory produces over 7,000 tons of coffee of its various types per year.
During the war, when in the background there was noise in the social networks surrounding the name Turkish coffee (even though apart from the name it has nothing to do with Turkey), the factory produced a special edition of packages with various sayings intended to strengthen the men and women fighters, to whom they donated a huge amount of coffee packages.
The Turkish name on the packaging was replaced by a variety of sentences, among them: Israel's people live, the generation of victory, we have no other country and we are strong together.
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Members of the late Kotz family. Even in the midst of the tragedy, the story about the entire family being murdered was unusual/Courtesy of the family
taste and fit
"One of my prides is that this small factory produces one of the favorite drinks of Israelis," says Levy.
"As soon as the war started, Strauss donated a lot to the soldiers, and along the way we also met a lot of business owners and helped them. Among the business owners were also owners of cafes that were damaged in the war, and with them we did the current cooperation."
Tell me about working with them.
"As mentioned, we chose three cafe owners who were affected by the war, two from the Otaf and one from the north. Besides the fact that 10% of the revenue will be directed to them, this has great exposure, because the capsule packaging comes with their portrait on the front and with their personal story. We met with them and invited them to come and be Part of the production process at the factory. We gave them tasting workshops, we showed them the whole process from A to Z. We tried to match the taste they would sell in their cafe to our production. We made an adjustment, if it's in the strength of the coffee, in the taste. We have two machines for producing capsules.
Stand Faced with such an array that produces 500 capsules per minute at a dizzying pace, and at the end to see a package with your portrait and story on the package - there is no human being who is not moved by that. We were all around them, including the development, production, and marketing people. We wrapped them very much in this story. The products are already on the shelves in the marketing networks and also on our website".
As mentioned earlier, on October 7, Levi lost his sister Livnat, who was murdered along with her family members. "Together with Livnat, we are four brothers," he says. "We are a very close-knit family, we meet a lot on holidays and Saturdays.
The last time we met was at our parents' in Gan Yavneh on the eve of Sukkot.
Among other things, we talked about Livnat's 50th birthday, which was supposed to be on October 25.
Livnat was born during the ceasefire in the Yom Kippur War.
It was a fun Saturday."
Then everything turned upside down on October 7.
"Usually when there are alarms, then automatically in the family group we start getting updates that everything is fine.
This time, at about half past six in the morning, when the alarms started, only the family in Kfar Gaza did not answer.
We knew they were all at home on the same Sabbath.
The boys studied at Kfar Hirok as part of Hapoel Tel Aviv's academy and were outstanding basketball players.
Rotem was a soldier, from a class in Behad 7, and on that Sabbath she was also at home.
"None of the family members answered. All this time we thought that maybe they didn't want to turn on the phones so they wouldn't be heard. Then there was the thought that maybe they were injured, maybe kidnapped. It was only on Monday, even on the wrong road, that we found out that they were probably dead. On Wednesday, we received a semi-official update on this. 10 days after that Saturday, the official update arrived and everyone told the same story: all the family members were in MMD, shot at point blank range, and were found hugging on the bed while the father, Aviv, tried to protect them all."
The "Israeli Series" by Strauss/Studio Strauss
From a wish to a will
Levy adds and says that thousands of people, who knew and also those who did not know the family, came to Shiva.
"People talked about how special this family was. Aviv was an amazing father. Even though he had a demanding job as a vice president in a consulting company and he had hobbies, he didn't miss any of his children's events.
Rotem brought light to everyone, Jonathan had a huge smile and was so tall, and he will develop a greedy, shy and modest child with such a good heart.
And of course Birch, my sister, whom I always admired and was proud of.
Livnat always said that it is important to drink life in large doses, because a day that passes does not come back."
How do you deal with such a tragedy?
"Our way of coping is mainly to talk about them, tell about them and try to continue what they believed in.
They were very connected to the community, wanted to do good, spread light.
Livnat, as mentioned, was supposed to celebrate her 50th birthday. During the Shava we remembered that at our last family gathering on Sukkot Eve, we asked her what she intended to do.
She said: 'I only want one thing, that each of you volunteer for an hour and send me a picture of the volunteering.
That would make me the happiest.'
On Shiva we also found out that she said this to each of her friends who asked her about the plans for her birthday." The
family members decided to turn Livnat's wish into a will. "We set up a Facebook and Instagram page, 'Levnat's Wish,' and we asked people that on October 25 each one would donate their time an hour and will dedicate it to Livnat," says Levy. "We were amazed by the response of thousands of people who donated, each in their own way.
Some went to volunteer in agriculture, some made cakes for soldiers.
People at Strauss were also very excited about this project, got involved and spread the wish.
One of the things that moved me the most is the volunteerism of the workers at the coffee factory.
On the birthday everyone came with cakes and pastries and we donated it to the soldiers.
It may be a cliché to say that a workplace is home, but this period only illustrated how special the company I am in is."
Levy reveals that Livnet's family decided to volunteer at Kibbutz Shafiim, where the Kfar Gaza community is located. "We arrived there with our parents," he says. "Aviv was an entrepreneur, a man of clusters who was constantly looking for how to be part of the community.
Over the course of about 15 years, he initiated an epiphany for the residents of the Otaf.
It would take place in a football field overlooking Gaza.
Aviv always said: 'They shoot missiles at us, we will fly kites as a message of peace.'
"This year, the kite festival was supposed to take place on October 7. We held a kite workshop in Shviim, and then Strauss got involved and brought boxes of all kinds of goodies there. We also did a kite festival in the Charles Clair Garden in Tel Aviv. All kinds of communities around the world also did kite festivals and sent us pictures." .
Ziv Levy, manager of the Strauss coffee factory.
Turned his murdered sister's wish into a will/Shiran Gabai
Craft class
Levy says that until nine years ago, Livnat was a graphic designer, "and then during Operation Tzuk Eitan they were evacuated to one of the kibbutzim in the north, where she saw all kinds of works where the children were employed. She came back upset by this evacuation, left her job and decided that she invests all her time and teaching for Establishing a workshop in Otef that brings back the ancient crafts of the past and integrates them into the local education system.
Also, one of Livnat's initiatives was 'Wings of a Doll.' Livnat did it together with the community in Kfar Gaza. When the community moved to Shafiim, they decided to set up a workshop there as well and in front of it they made wings out of old toys."
He admits that he still does not fully digest what happened.
"It's a whole family, five people, each of them was a whole world," he says.
"The thought that this whole thing ends in an instant is simply unimaginable. We want to spread throughout the world what a special family they were. A family that wanted to spread light and do good to others."
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