Zabar’s Family

“I came here to be of some help,” said Saul Zabar, recalling his start in the family business some 75 years ago, as reported by Tina Kelley in the New York Times (5/31/08). His first job was to be on the lookout for police when Zabar’s violated “blue laws” by opening on Sundays. He was just a young lad at the time and wasn’t any good at it because he says he couldn’t bring himself to run when he saw a police officer, who would just follow him into the store. Saul’s father, Louis Zabar, didn’t fire him, of course, but did rib him about it for years to come. Seventy-five years later, Zabar’s is still going strong, doing $50 million a year, with Saul, now 80, still at the helm.

At first, Zabar’s was “a simple smoked-fish department inside a Daitch food store,” which Louis Zabar “soon expanded into five small stores on the Upper West Side.” Today it is one big, 20,000 square-foot store with more than 250 employees, serving up “smoked fish, a United Nations worth of cheeses, and the iconic coffee and rugelach” to more than 35,000 customers a week. That iconic coffee, Starbucks fans, dates back 40 years, when Saul decided to apprentice himself to a coffee expert. “My wife said, ‘What are you wasting your time on?” says Saul. “And I said, ‘Give me some time. Give me 20 years.”

Zabar’s today sells more than 8,000 pounds of its own coffee a week, bringing in between $50,000 and $60,000 each week. But Zabar’s juice isn’t in the caffeine; it’s in the sense of family that permeates this family business. Saul likes to talk about “workers who proposed marriage in the fish department” and how, over the years, he has lent a total more than $50,000 to employees who otherwise couldn’t pay off high-interest loans. Saul has even patched up his once-strained relationship with his younger brother and retail rival, Eli Zabar. “I think more community goes on inside Zabar’s than in a lot of places,” says Saul’s wife of 40 years, Carole. “There are people you know and people that want to help you.” ~ Tim Manners, editor