Shouk co-owner Dennis Friedman speaks out after protests and boycotts drive his D.C. restaurant chain to shut, reflecting on the backlash, vandalism, and the mission to carry folks collectively by meals.
Shouk, a plant-based kosher street-food chain in Washington, D.C., completely shut down its closing areas this month partially because of protests and boycotts from anti-Israel activists.
As soon as featured by the Meals Community and The Washington Put up for its “Shouk Burger,” the chain had 5 shops within the area. The closures come after two years of protests and boycotts over the struggle in Gaza crippled the enterprise.
Native activist group DC for Palestine led a boycott marketing campaign that claimed the restaurant’s falafel and different menu objects “appropriated” Palestinian delicacies and that the homeowners have been “complicit in Israeli apartheid.”
Co-owner Dennis Friedman, a Jewish American who opened the primary Shouk location over a decade in the past with Israeli co-owner Ran Nussbacher, rejected these accusations. He stated the mission of Shouk was to carry folks collectively.
Jewish homeowners of Shouk, a kosher meals chain, stated the harassment and boycotts from activists led to loss in income and compelled them to close down their closing areas in Washington, D.C. and Rockville, Maryland this month. (Laura Chase de Formigny for The Washington Put up through Getty Pictures)
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“I do not agree with that as a result of the intention of Shouk was pure, and good,” Friedman advised Fox Information Digital. “When my enterprise associate got here to me, it wasn’t ‘let’s make Israeli meals.’ He wished to make plant-based meals that reminded him of his childhood and residential. That was the core of the place we began to construct the recipes. For essentially the most half, Shouk has been promoted as Mediterranean, plant-based, and Center Japanese. Very not often have we claimed the rest. That’s why Shouk is written in each Arabic and Hebrew in all of the shops — as a result of we’re a spot to carry everybody collectively.”
He referred to as Shouk “a gathering place for folks of all races, colours, and creeds to return collectively to take pleasure in meals,” that was good for purchasers and the planet.
He stated their Georgetown location was the primary to be focused, citing its proximity to Georgetown College and what he described as a “heavy Muslim inhabitants” within the space.
The Center Japanese-inspired fast-casual restaurant Shouk in Washington, D.C. not too long ago shut down after pro-Palestinian activists led a boycott in opposition to the Israeli-owned enterprise. (Justin T. Gellerson for The Washington Put up through Getty Pictures/Tasos Katopodis/Getty Pictures / Getty Pictures)
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Whereas he stated enterprise was booming earlier than Oct. 7, the protests rapidly began tanking their earnings.
Friedman stated they reached out to native enterprise teams and representatives and employed safety outdoors their shops, calling the expertise of being harassed by protesters over the previous two years “scary and unnerving.”
“We had all the pieces from little youngsters coming into the shop throughout a busy lunch screaming ‘Free Palestine’ whereas their mother and father videoed for social media,” he stated. He stated the protests have been a part of a “very coordinated” and profitable “effort by the BDS to harm Shouk.”
“There have been posters of useless child Palestinian youngsters on the home windows or on our seating outdoors. You recognize, it ranged from, you understand, vandalism to intimidation to perhaps issues that we do not even know,” he added.
Shouk was focused by an “anti-apartheid” boycott marketing campaign led by native pro-Palestinian activist teams. (Dennis Friedman)
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Friedman mirrored on the chain’s 12-year run, calling it an “superb expertise” he couldn’t have imagined in his “wildest desires.”
He stated Shouk was “close to and pricey to his coronary heart” and that he and Nussbacher tried their finest to maintain their workers in the course of the closures.
“Most of our workers have been with us since we opened,” he stated. “Our turnover was very low as a result of we ran the corporate ethically, we ran it effectively, and we ran it pretty. And so our workers turned a part of our household, and so they did not need to depart.”
The chain closed its final areas simply days earlier than a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was reached.
A professional-Palestinian activist holds up an indication studying ‘From The River To The Sea Palestine Will Be Free’ throughout a protest in London in November 2023. (Mark Kerrison/In Footage through Getty Pictures / Getty Pictures)
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DC for Palestine celebrated the closures as a “BDS win” in an Instagram put up, writing:
“Shouk WAS one of many major targets of our “APARTHEID? I DON’T BUY IT” client boycott initiative! A lot of what they served was Palestinian meals that they culturally appropriated as “Israeli avenue meals”. Moreover, they imported Israeli substances for his or her dishes. TODAY WE ARE HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THAT, AS OF OCTOBER 1, 2025, SHOUK HAS CLOSED ITS DOOR, PERMANENTLY!”
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The group urged supporters to proceed boycotting U.S. and native companies that promote Israeli merchandise.