Manchester’s oldest kosher delicatessen, which was named after the Titanic, has itself been sunk, a victim of increased competition and diminished customer loyalty.
Managing director Richard Hyman said he was too upset to talk about the closure of Titanics, a family business founded in 1913 by his great-grandfather Joseph Abraham Hyman, a survivor of the ill-starred cruise ship.
The Cheetham Hill branch was the final to shut up shop. Its Altrincham outlet, operated by a separate company, closed a few months ago.
Joseph Hyman’s grandson Stanley, who ran the store during the 1970s, told the Jewish Telegraph: “It is a very sad day and the end of an era in Manchester.
“The community has been taken over by the big supermarket chains. At Pesach, for example, the supermarkets sell everything for less than half the price, so everybody started to go there because it was cheaper.
“I remember there being 40 kosher shops in Manchester at one time. Now the only surviving ones are the frum ones.”
