APRIL 2019 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 25
WHOLLY MOLI
KOZY SHACK
A PROVEN PUDDING
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
Vincent Gruppuso found the best
thing since the sliced bread he was
delivering was rice pudding at Cozy
Shack deli on his route in Brooklyn,
so he bought the recipe and launched
a dessert empire in 1967.
After changing the name’s “C” to a
“K,” the U.S. Navy veteran opened a
factory in Queens, moved facilities
to Mineola a decade later, and then
to Hicksville in 1994, where its headquarters
remain today — but the
recipe remains the same.
“Kozy Shack Pudding is real, wholesome
pudding made one kettle at
a time, just like grandma used to
make,” said Andy Braunshausen, the
company’s marketing director.
Over the years, the company grew
from a one-man operation
to having second and third
plants in California and
Ireland, plus its own logistics
arm, Freshway Distributors.
Customers voted with their
spoons, as Kozy Shack is billed
as America’s best-selling brand of
rice and tapioca pudding with its
four-ounce pudding cups on store
shelves nationwide. The company
also sells chocolate, flan, cinnamon
raisin rice pudding, and French
vanilla rice pudding.
“We grow in double-digit fashion
every year,” Gruppuso reportedly
told a 2003 Long Island food industry
conference.
In 2006, the proverbial proof in the
pudding came when The New York
Times put Kozy Shack rice pudding
on a list of its "Grocery Gems" and
wrote that it "makes up in
flavor what it lacks in glamour."
A year later, Gruppuso died at age 67
in his East Hampton home from complications
of diabetes. His company
Kozy Shack Pudding
is made on LI and sold
nationwide, in Europe,
and in South America.
had about 400 employees and
did around $140 million in
annual sales at the time.
His three daughters who inherited
the company grew sales
to about $200 million by 2011, a
year before Minnesota-based food
giant Land O'Lakes, Inc. gobbled up
Kozy Shack for an undisclosed sum.
Five years ago, Kozy Shack hired its
first “spokes-grandma” to represent
the company in a national media campaign
to drive the point home that it’s
“still made the right way, slow-simmered
in small-kettle batches using
simple ingredients like rice, milk,
sugar and eggs.”
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