Gatorade - Refreshing, tasty and kosher

March 11, 2010

Thanks to a pair of Hebrew Academy alumni, Gatorade is now kosher.

By now, many of MJBHA's everyday athletes are aware of a major advancement in bringing a popular product to the kosher market: Gatorade, a leading sports drink, now bears a kosher symbol from the OU.

The story of how Gatorade became kosher is one of coincidences and good timing—the efforts of two MJBHA graduates working at Gatorade in Chicago working to gain the hechsher, and changes in the product’s formula that made it attainable.

The story starts with Ron Siesser, Gatorade’s Human Resources Manager. When Siesser, who graduated from the Hebrew Academy in 1995, joined PepsiCo in 2004, he noticed that Gatorade did not have kosher certification and was missing potential sales to the Jewish market.

However, changing an ingredient in a major brand is not an easy undertaking, particularly if a strong business case cannot be made. Ron decided to take his proposal to Lily Zaidman, the Chief Financial Officer of Gatorade, to help project the potential sales that could be generated from Jewish consumers if Gatorade became kosher. Much to Ron's surprise, Lily shared that she was also Jewish and had immigrated with her family to the United States from Lima, Peru when she was a teenager. She went on to describe to him what it was like growing up in a small, observant community in Lima and her parents desire to find a similar type of community in the US.

"My curiosity piqued and I asked Lily which city she lived in," said Ron. "It was a small suburb outside Washington DC that she was convinced I had never heard of." Ron then asked her what school she had gone to, and again Lily said it was a small Jewish school that he probably never heard of. Of course she was referring the Hebrew Academy. Back then, it was located on 16th street and only held classes through 9th grade.

"When we first moved to Silver Spring, my parents sent me to public school because we didn't have any money," recalled Lily. "I felt so out of place and begged my parents after the second day to send me to the Jewish school." The Academy, which was far smaller in the 1970's, welcomed Lily despite her family's inability to pay the full tuition. After 9th grade, which was as far as the school went, Lily continued on at the Jewish Day School in Rockville.

With a newly-found common background and a shared purpose, Ron and Lily worked together over the next year to convince the business that kosher Gatorade made good financial sense. Initially, business leaders believed the cost of making Gatorade kosher would be prohibitive, but Zaidman and Siesser found that the formula had gone through significant changes in the previous few years that made the remaining steps toward kashrut very attainable. Those changes, which included replacing a special color dye called cochineal derived from beetles with a non-animal based food coloring, sealed the deal.

Their efforts oversaw the replacement of suitable alternative to cochineal as well as coordination of bringing the OU into the Gatorade plants to certify the process. "Once in a generation a Jewish athlete makes it to the highest level of professional sports, but there are thousands of everyday athletes who need kosher refueling. Most of them will now be drinking Gatorade," said Ron.