In 1888, Harris and Judith Grodzinski, bakers by trade, joined many members of the Jewish community in Tsarist Lithuania in migrating westward from Vilnius, establishing themselves in the East End of London. There they hired kosher ovens and set out baking bilkelekh, thereby beginning a business that would grow from a trading barrow to a full-scale bakery at 31 Fieldgate Street, over which they lived.