If your grandparents already drink their coffee from mugs bedecked with your mug, if they eat off of placemats adorned with blurry photos of your cousins, if they pencil in bridge nights on a calendar of family photos (all while being lit up by a Dutch-master-like beam of light streaming from a digital picture frame), you probably need a new grandparent-gifting strategy.
At times, my family members have managed to find presents that my grandparents have needed and enjoyed. There was the artfully designed, 500-piece puzzle I gave them during the pandemic lockdowns. Then there was the birthday cashmere sweater, the sriracha sauce, and a patio umbrella. (The jury is still out on the iPad.)
But, short of visiting them in person, nothing seems to land quite like food (and combining the two is another level altogether). It is perhaps a tired Jewish cliché, but I believe that when it comes to gifts, the preeminence of food is a truth as infallible and as unshakeable as the love of a grandparent itself.
My grandparents live in Milwaukee, where, according to my grandmother, it is difficult-bordering-on-impossible to find bialys. For the uninitiated, bialys are a sort of oniony fusion of a bagel and pizza crust (I’m sure I’ll get flak for this description).
But as it so happens, Goldbelly (an online company that works with local food institutions to ship its goods across the country) can get a dozen bialys from Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys, in New York City, to my grandparents in a mere 48 hours (for about $60). The bialys ship the same day they’re baked, and they arrive tightly packed with ice packs. My grandfather, a lifelong photographer whose camera is never out of reach, sent me photos of a recent package of Kossar’s bialys garnished with cream cheese and lox (on the day the box arrived, my grandparents had bialys for both breakfast and dinner).
Gift pick
Kossar’s iconic bialys, which come in either onion or sesame, can be mixed and matched with bagels, and they freeze well. You can also add cream cheese or lox to the gift.
They arrive still fluffy, without a hint of staleness, as if they just came out of the oven earlier that day. The first time I sent these bialys to my grandparents was for Hanukkah, and they arrived, conveniently, by the first night. They also tend to freeze and thaw well. So they can be eaten at the recipient’s convenience and will last for months (or, more importantly, far longer than eight nights). For an additional fee, Kossar’s will also ship pints of cream cheese and lox.
This may be more than what I would ordinarily pay for a dozen bialys in New York, but it feels like such a laughably small sum when your grandparents are living in a bialy desert. And for grandparents (who are usually in the outgoing-package business yet rarely in the incoming-package business), what better gift is there than the unexpected arrival of a box full of bialys and schmear?
And that is the magic of Goldbelly. This company lets you ship a sliver of nostalgia across the country when it might otherwise have been completely impossible. You can send famous local goods—from Pequod’s Deep Dish Pizza in Chicago to Gambino’s Bakery King Cakes in New Orleans—to the faraway people who love these treats the most. Food is a love language, so it makes sense that Goldbelly saw its sales increase by 300% in the first year of the pandemic.
Goldbelly packages usually ship and arrive quickly. So you can find a meaningful last-minute gift that requires little to no forethought, and it will save you a trip to the store and then the post office. Plus, there’s something extravagant about being able to easily send a package of some adored, far-flung delicacy, even if it’s just as a simple “thank-you.” But where Goldbelly truly excels is helping you find a gift for the people in your life who are hard to shop for or who already seem to have everything.
My Wirecutter colleagues also rely on Goldbelly to send thoughtful holiday, birthday, and bereavement packages to loved ones. Here are a few that offerings we’ve enjoyed.
