How The Kosher works

Where the data comes from

Every venue in The Kosher traces back to a primary source — usually the certifying body's own published list of establishments. We've built scrapers for ~60 hashgachot covering the US, Israel, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, and Canada. Where a body doesn't publish a list, we fall back on community resources (Young Israel branches, Chabad shul kosher pages, OpenStreetMap kosher tags) and attribute each venue to the supervising body it lists.

Nothing about a venue's kashrus is invented. If a field has no value, the directory says so — see "verified vs. unverified" below.

Three-state attributes: ✓ / ✗ / ?

Every kashrus attribute on a venue has three possible states. ✓ Verified yes — the venue holds that standard, sourced from the certifying body or confirmed by an admin. ✗ Verified no — we've confirmed the venue does not hold that standard. ? Unverified — we haven't recorded an answer either way, and you should confirm on the premises before relying on it.

This matters because most kosher directories conflate "no" and "we don't know", which means a perfectly Pas Yisrael bakery might look like it isn't, simply because the data point was never collected. We refuse to do that. When you see a "?" chip, it's an honest "we haven't verified" rather than a misleading default.

Works For Me

Set your kashrus standards once at /me/settings and every venue card and detail page tells you whether the venue meets them: green ("works for you"), amber ("mostly yes — these are unverified"), or red ("hard requirement isn't met"). The logic is deterministic — it's a transparent rule comparison, not a black-box recommender. If you want stricter behavior — treating "unverified" the same as "no" — turn on Strict mode in your settings.

Shabbat modes

We distinguish three states a venue can be in on Shabbat: closed, "open commercial" (with the disclaimer that halachic acceptability varies), and "Shabbos Meals" — fully supervised prepaid venues where the hashgacha covers Shabbat itself. The third is rare and a major differentiator for travelers; we don't roll it together with the others.

The bot

The Kosher also runs as a WhatsApp assistant. Text or voice-note any kosher-dining question; the bot grounds every answer in this same directory. It never invents venues. If something's unverified, it'll tell you so explicitly. Link your number at /me/phone and your kashrus profile applies automatically.

What we are not

The Kosher is not a hashgacha. We don't certify kosher; we aggregate the people who do. Standards vary by community and posek; we don't editorialize about hashkafa. Always verify what you see here against the physical certificate in the venue, and ask your rabbi about anything halachically sensitive (Shabbat operation, trusted hashgachot, etc.).

Help us be more accurate

• Spot a wrong field? Click "Suggest a correction" on any venue page.
• Know a venue we don't? Submit it.
• Hashgacha not in our list? Propose it; admins review every submission.