Does Elite support Israel?

Elite is Israel's iconic chocolate, confectionery and coffee brand. It was founded in 1933, when Eliyahu Fromenchenko — who had run a candy business in Latvia and brought his machinery with him — established the first Elite chocolate and confectionery factory in Ramat Gan together with a group of Zionist partners. Elite dominated the Israeli chocolate market for decades, and its Taami, Pesek Zman and Para bars, its instant and Turkish coffee and its Elite Espresso Bar outlets remain household staples. Elite merged into the Strauss group in 2004, creating Strauss-Elite (renamed Strauss Group in 2007); today Elite is a brand of Strauss Group and not a separate legal entity, and its plants — including the chocolate factory in Nof HaGalil — are Strauss facilities. This entry records the brand's Israeli manufacturing and market presence, not a donation.

From the outbreak of the October 2023 war, Elite-branded products and outlets were part of the wartime distribution run by the brand's owner, Strauss Group: thousands of food products went to regular and reserve soldiers, emergency and rescue forces, military bases, hospitals and evacuated families, and the Elite Espresso Bar chain served free coffee to uniformed security and rescue personnel at its railway-station branches around the country. Attribution: the acting entity is Strauss Group, which owns and operates the Elite brand and the Elite Espresso Bar network; Elite itself is a brand, and company employees volunteered in the distribution.

On 25 December 2023, with Israel’s Gaza war under way, ynet reported that Elite’s "Turkish coffee" — a 60-year-old brand that ynet says still holds 25% of the Israeli coffee market — was reaching shelves in a temporary special edition whose front dropped the brand name in favour of wartime slogans: "Generation of Victory" (דור הניצחון), "Am Yisrael Chai — the people of Israel lives" (עם ישראל חי) and "I have no other country" (אין לי ארץ אחרת). The Times of Israel’s Arabic edition reported the same repackaging as replacing the "Turkish coffee" label with Israeli national slogans and the flag. The trigger was Israeli public anger at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statements against Israel after 7 October 2023 and the boycott calls against Turkish products that followed. Avi Laofer, chief executive of Strauss Coffee Israel, told ynet the company wanted to make clear the coffee has no connection to Turkey — the beans come from Brazil, Vietnam and Ethiopia and it has been produced in Lod for 60 years — and to "raise morale", pointing to the soldiers in Gaza who send the company photographs of themselves drinking its coffee: "think of the soldiers in Gaza who will get Turkish coffee, but instead of ‘Turkish coffee’ the packaging will say ‘Generation of Victory’ — that strengthens him." Attribution: the acting entity is Strauss Group’s Israeli coffee division, which owns the Elite brand; Laofer described the edition as temporary, with the original packaging staying on sale for anyone who preferred it. This is a public statement of wartime solidarity carried on a product, not a donation, and no money or goods were given. Corroboration: ynet’s interview with Laofer is the original reporting, and the Times of Israel Arabic report carries the same facts and the same quotes rather than reporting of its own — two languages, one witness.

Calcalist's May 2025 review of charitable giving by Tel Aviv-125 index companies reported that Strauss Group — the owner of the Elite brand — donated ILS 16 million in 2024 on top of ILS 15 million in 2023, roughly ILS 31 million (about $8.5 million at the Bank of Israel rate of 3.647 ILS/USD on 31 December 2024) across the two war years, directed at populations affected by the war. Attribution: this is group-level corporate giving reported for Strauss Group, not a separate Elite budget; Elite is one of the group's brands and does not report giving of its own. The dollar figure is a conversion, not a reported amount. Strauss Group's own website independently states it had donated about 3 million products worth millions of shekels to evacuated communities, security and reserve forces, and the Hostages and Missing Families Headquarters — corroborating the scale and beneficiaries of the group's wartime giving, though the company page does not itself break the total down into the ILS 15m (2023) / ILS 16m (2024) figures Calcalist reports.

In May 2026, against the backdrop of Israel’s 78th Independence Day celebrations, Elite Coffee (קפה עלית) — the Strauss Group coffee brand — ran a national initiative with the Israel Association of Community Centres called "Thank you to the founders’ generation": dozens of community meetings, lectures and panels held that week in 15 localities from Kiryat Shmona in the north to the Arava in the south, at which senior citizens who were there when the state was established sat over a cup of coffee with teenagers, families and reserve soldiers back from long call-ups. The launch was at the Lia community centre in the Herzliya network; Ariel Mishal, chairman of the Association, said the story running from the 1948 generation to today’s "is a fairly similar story", and Yiftach Atzmon, chief executive of Strauss’s coffee and confectionery division, said "we set ourselves a social vision at Elite Coffee to help relieve loneliness in the State of Israel and connect people over a cup of coffee", which he tied to "everything happening here right now". Attribution: the acting entity is Strauss Group’s coffee and confectionery division, which operates the Elite Coffee brand, with the community-centre network as the delivery partner; no cost, sponsorship fee or donation figure was disclosed, so the amount column stays a dash. Sourcing caveat: both reports were produced with the brand — ynet’s feature is labelled as made with Elite Coffee and the Association, and the ice piece as made with Strauss — so the programme rests on the company’s own account of it rather than on independent reporting.