NEW YORK (AP) – When Albertson’s hired Yakov Yarmove more than three years ago, the company found a point man to navigate what might seem like an unlikely market for a grocery chain with stores in places like Cheyenne, Wyo., and Evanston, Ill.: kosher food.

Albertson’s, one of the nation’s largest grocery chains, has since dramatically expanded kosher aisles at hundreds of its supermarkets across the country. The company has also launched more than two dozen kosher destination stores that include everything from bakeries to delis.

“There’s a kosher awakening,” said Yarmove, an observant Jew who is Albertson’s corporate kosher, marketing and operations manager. “Kosher was perceived as scary and foreign. Now it’s perceived as chic. I think everybody is realizing that there is an opportunity.”

The Idaho-based Albertson’s is just one of many companies around the country competing to get a lucrative slice of an approximately $9 billion kosher industry that is growing at a rate of 15 percent a year.

Experts say the boom is being fueled by several factors, including vegetarians and younger customers looking for healthier and safer food – the same demographic that has helped the organic market take off. Plenty of these customers are not Jewish.

“When I take the matzos to the church, they love it,” said Ursula Torres, of Manhattan, who was buying 100 percent wheat matzos recently at Streit’s, a Jewish landmark on the Lower East Side.

Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior research analyst with Mintel International Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm, recently completed a nationwide study in April that produced some surprising results about the kosher craze.

She found 55 percent of the people who buy kosher products believed the food was better for them – almost double the number in a similar study Mogelonsky conducted in 2003.

“They trust the kosher symbol like they’d trust the Good Housekeeping seal,” she said.

Part of the trust, Mogelonsky said, is derived from how the animals are raised. According to Jewish law, they cannot be pumped with antibiotics, additives, hormones or fed animal byproducts. Companies haven’t overlooked the advantages of selling kosher, which means that the food was prepared under Jewish dietary laws.

Manischewitz, one of the best-known kosher food companies in the world, is developing an advertising campaign that says their name is “Jewish for good food.”

Hebrew National, a division of ConAgra Foods, has always touted that famous tagline found on its packages: “We answer to a higher authority.” But over the summer, the company decided to move the “Finest Kosher Quality” seal to a more prominent spot on certain product packaging.

Lou Nieto, president of packaged meats at ConAgra, said two things are driving the double-digit growth at Hebrew National, which recently opened a new state-of-the-art kosher facility in Michigan.

“First and foremost is taste but number two is that it’s 100 percent kosher beef – nothing artificial,” Nieto said, who oversees the Hebrew National brand.

He added that sales were being bolstered by non-Jewish customers, who devour the company’s popular hot dogs at hundreds of venues across the United States.

To meet demand, the industry has undergone radical changes, recognizing that kosher food is more than matzo, gefilte fish and borscht. The transformation was on display last month in New York at Kosherfest 2005, a convention that drew more than 6,100 retail and foodservice buyers, manufacturers and distributors from 36 countries.

“Anything that can be made kosher, is being made kosher,” said Menachem Lubinsky, who founded Kosherfest. “Even the Chinese are going kosher.”

Kosher dumpling wrappers – no problem. Asian sesame ginger noodle and Thai chili sauce? They got it. Italian kosher. It’s in abundance. Penne rigate, lasagna, angel hair, and all enriched with soy protein. There is also a kosher energy drink called “Kabbalah.”

And it seemed like almost everyone was selling hummus, creating a war of the chick pea. If any one food is leading the kosher charge, it might be hummus.

One of the biggest humus makers is Sabra Go Mediterranean, produced by Blue & White Food Products in New York.

“Today, all the hippies buy this stuff,” said Nissim Ohana, who distributes Sabra products and has been selling kosher food for 20 years in the United States. “Humus has become a very hot item.”

In two decades, Ohana, an Israeli, has seen the number of Brooklyn stores purchasing his kosher food rise from 16 to more than 200.

“Five ears ago, it wouldn’t have sold,” said Frank Widdi of Met Foodmarkets in Brooklyn. Widdi, a Palestinian, now has two separate refrigerators with humus, including one for Sabra which he gets from Ohana.

A Palestinian selling kosher humus?

“Business is business,” Ohana says.

At Streit’s, the venerable New York company is adapting to the changing environment, producing Mediterranean, Spelt and five-grain matzos, along with spreads like sundried tomato morsels.

“Chains carry it,” said Alan Adler, director of operations at Streit’s, which has been making matzos since 1925. “Our products are on the shelf year round. We are having trouble baking enough matzos.”

AP-ES-12-16-05 2037EST