Does Strauss support Israel?

Strauss Group is one of Israel's largest food and beverage manufacturers, founded in 1939 when Richard and Hilde Strauss bought a dairy in Nahariya. It is headquartered in Petah Tikva, listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (STRS) with the Strauss family holding roughly 57% of the shares, and employs about 15,000 people in more than 20 countries. Its Israeli portfolio includes dairy, the Elite coffee and chocolate brands (Elite merged into the group in 2004, creating Strauss-Elite, renamed Strauss Group in 2007), Strauss Water's Tami 4 bars, Mediterranean dips and salty snacks.

Strauss Group's own website stated for years that the company had 'adopted' the IDF Golani Brigade's reconnaissance unit — supplying food products for training and missions plus personal care packages for each soldier — and that funds committed by Strauss Israel's sales division went to welfare, cultural and educational activities for soldiers, including pocket money for soldiers from poor families, sports and recreation equipment and books and games for the soldiers' club; a similar arrangement covered the Givati Brigade's 'Shualei Shimshon' unit. When the practice drew a US campus boycott campaign against the group's Sabra hummus in late 2010, chairwoman Ofra Strauss defended it to Forbes: 'For us, Israeli soldiers are not army; Israeli soldiers are our kids.' The wording was later removed from the corporate website. Attributed to Strauss Group corporate (Strauss Israel sales division), not to employees or to the family personally.

Ahead of the Tishrei holidays in September 2023 — weeks before the October war — Strauss Group expanded its long-running work with Latet, an Israeli humanitarian aid organisation, and donated 50,000 holiday meals for distribution through Latet's network of partner nonprofits, together with cooler boxes of dairy products for low-income families. Dozens of Strauss employees went to Latet's logistics centre and packed more than 8,000 food parcels. The company also opened its Strauss+ loyalty app so customers could convert points they had earned into donated food packages; those points are the customers' own, not company money. ICE, which reported the donation, described the Strauss-Latet partnership as running for more than 20 years and resting mainly on year-round rescued-food donations worth cumulatively millions of shekels — that cumulative figure belongs to two decades of giving rather than to this donation, so no amount is recorded on this row. The donation is attributed to Strauss Group corporate; the packing was employee volunteering and the app channel converted customers' points, not corporate funds.

From the outbreak of the October 2023 war, Strauss Group donated thousands of food products to IDF regular and reserve soldiers, emergency and rescue forces, military bases, hospitals and evacuated families, including supplies for tens of thousands of evacuees housed in Eilat. It repeatedly distributed Tami 4 water bars and bottled water, supplied gluten-free products in cooperation with the Israeli Celiac Association and vegan products with the Vegan Friendly organisation, and ran field activities at roughly 50 gathering points from the north to the south — circus workshops, juggling shows, children's performances for evacuees and artist performances for soldiers — with company employees volunteering to hand out encouragement packages. Strauss's Elite coffee outlets also served free coffee to uniformed personnel at railway stations. Attributed to Strauss Group corporate, with its employees volunteering in the distribution. A separate ICE report on 9 October 2023, two days into the war, recorded the first of these announcements: products and packages for hospitals in the south, for security forces and volunteer organisations deployed in the field, and for community centres taking in displaced residents, delivered together with the Community Centres Association, United Hatzalah and Latet, alongside free coffee for anyone in uniform at Elite's railway-station coffee outlets.

On 10 November 2023 Strauss Group announced a fund "on the scale of millions of shekels" — the company's own wording, with no figure attached — for farmers in the western Negev hit by the war, set up together with Leket Israel, the nonprofit that collects surplus food and passes it on to hundreds of thousands of recipients. In the immediate term, the Israeli daily Davar reported, the fund was to give about 800 farmers financial help towards buying food products for their families; no source names any communities as beneficiaries. A longer-term programme was to be built with the farmers, covering financial support, legal aid, equipment to rebuild damaged infrastructure, alternative employment and help finding workers, innovation development and product adaptation to the farms' growing capabilities, and promoting the purchase of local produce. Leket Israel was to manage contact with the farmers, map needs and lead a professional steering committee defining who qualifies. The fund reaches beyond Strauss's own suppliers, and that is why Leket was brought in: Osnat Golan, the group's deputy CEO for sustainability and corporate brand, told Ynet that Strauss works with about 35 growers in the Gaza-border area in normal times, whereas Leket receives produce donations from all 800 farmers there, so Leket would analyse the needs and prioritise between farms. The supplier relationship is still part of the picture. Davar reports, citing company data, that about 87% of the potatoes used as raw material in Strauss's plants come from local farmers, among them the kibbutzim Tze'elim, Gvulot, Sufa, Be'eri, Ein HaShlosha, Nirim, Kerem Shalom, Nir Yitzhak, Nir Oz and Moshav Amioz, which supply its snack plant in Sderot — that is Strauss's sourcing list, not a list of fund recipients. Ein HaShlosha's fields have supplied Strauss for 25 years, and its field-crops manager Yochi Kofler, Davar's one named beneficiary, rejected the charity framing outright: "I don't want a donation and philanthropy, and I don't feel that's what they're offering... this is an investment that will bear fruit serving both sides." He called it a growth fund rather than a rehabilitation fund, said Strauss was setting the fund's goals together with the farmers according to their needs, and it is Kofler, not the company, who said "the partnership between us is not momentary, it is for years." Shai Babad, Strauss Group's president and CEO, said the border-area farmers "form an inseparable part of the company's activity" and that the fund would help farmers recover and "also help the Israeli food industry" and the development of the damaged areas in the south. This row is typed as a donation on the strength of the immediate cash-for-food element, but it is a supplier-relief fund with a commercial side the company states itself. Strauss gave a scale rather than a sum — deliberately, pending the farmers' actual needs — so no figure is recorded in the Amount column. Attributed to Strauss Group corporate. Davar, Ynet and ICE report the same 10 November 2023 announcement, so they are one announcement and not three independent confirmations of the fund, though each carries its own on-the-record material; ICE describes the fund as financed jointly with Leket Israel, while Davar and Ynet describe Leket's role as mapping, contact and the steering committee, and no source states how much of the money is Leket's.

In a May 2025 review of charitable giving by Tel Aviv-125 index companies, Calcalist reported that Strauss Group donated ILS 16 million in 2024, on top of ILS 15 million in 2023 — roughly ILS 31 million (about $8.5 million at 3.647 ILS/USD) across the two war years, directed at populations affected by the war. Figure is the company's aggregate reported cash giving as compiled by Calcalist; the dollar value is a conversion, not a reported figure. 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 this giving, though the company page does not itself restate the ILS 15m/16m split Calcalist reports. A second Calcalist report, on 15 February 2026, drew on a survey by the firm ZOOO and placed Strauss Group ninth among Tel Aviv-listed companies with ILS 33.5 million of donations over the preceding two years — a separate count on a slightly different window, so it corroborates the order of magnitude rather than restating the ILS 31 million above, which is the figure with a stated year-by-year split and the one this row publishes.

Strauss Frito-Lay is an Israeli salty-snacks company established in 1999 as a joint venture between PepsiCo and Strauss Group (then Elite Industries), which has partnered with PepsiCo's Frito-Lay arm since 1990; it manufactures and markets Doritos, Cheetos and Ruffles in Israel. A second joint venture, the Sabra dips business, ran for nearly two decades until 24 November 2024, when Strauss sold its 50% Sabra stake to PepsiCo for $244 million and PepsiCo in turn granted Strauss an option to buy a majority of Strauss Frito-Lay (valued at about $396 million). Attribution note: these are joint ventures between an American multinational and an Israeli group — neither party's actions should be attributed to the other.

Latet, an Israeli humanitarian aid organisation, reported on its own site on 15 March 2026 that during the 'Sha'agat HaAri' (Lion's Roar) operation Strauss Group joined it to assemble more than 2,000 emergency kits for families and children in the line of fire who were staying in shelters; the kits combined food and games. Latet added that ahead of Passover Strauss would also donate 1,000 food parcels of Strauss products for elderly people, to be distributed through Latet. This is the recipient organisation's own account and it thanks Strauss for the partnership; the Passover parcels were described as a forthcoming commitment rather than a completed delivery, and no monetary value is given for either. Attributed to Strauss Group corporate.

After the 'Sha'agat HaAri' (Lion's Roar) operation ended, Strauss Group and chairwoman Ofra Strauss donated appreciation packages of sweet and savoury products to the 2,200 employees of Assuta Ashdod Public Hospital — medical, nursing, allied-health, logistics and operations staff — who had worked round the clock through the fighting, during which the hospital treated about 200 wounded and casualties. The hospital's director, Dr Galit Kaufman, thanked 'Ofra Strauss and Strauss Group' on the record. The report, dated 15 April 2026, names the company and its chairwoman jointly and does not say how the cost was divided between them, so both are stated here rather than the company alone; no monetary value is given. It rests on a single local Ashdod outlet and was read through an Internet Archive snapshot because the live page could not be reached.

On 4 May 2026 Ranan Kovalsky, chief executive of Strauss Israel, opened Globes's South Business Conference and said the periphery 'is part of us at Strauss': almost all of the group's logistics sites and plants are in the north and the south, 'and we will continue to invest — industry is a long-distance run, and you have to invest for the generations to come.' He credited suppliers, farmers and retailers with keeping production and supply running after 7 October 2023, said the north was burning while the periphery was Israel's national resilience, and pointed to the Michael Campus launched in northern Israel and to partnerships with Yotvata and Yad Mordechai. This is a commercial commitment to keep manufacturing and investing in Israel — not a donation, aid, or a political statement of support. Globes disclosed that the conference itself was held in cooperation with Strauss Group, Bank Leumi and the Netivot municipality, so the platform was in part the company's own. Read through an Internet Archive snapshot, because globes.co.il refuses automated requests.