Saul Zabar, the principal owner of the Upper West Side specialty food store that bears his family’s name, passed away yesterday at age 97.
Some excerpts from the New York Times obituary:
• “The oldest of three brothers, Mr. Zabar did not intend to go into the family business, which his parents, Louis and Lillian (Teit) Zabar, started in 1934 as the smoked-fish department of a Daitch supermarket on Broadway. Saul had visions of becoming a doctor. But when his father died in 1950 at 49, Saul left college and returned home to help out.”
• “Saul, usually dressed in a polo shirt and khaki trousers, kept his eye on the Zabar’s operation for more than 70 years. In particular, he had dominion over the counters where an estimated 2,000 pounds of smoked fish and 8,000 pounds of coffee were sold to the 40,000 customers who filled the store in a typical week.”
• “‘We get asked often why we don’t franchise, because we have a lot of branded products,’ he told the magazine Edible Manhattan in 2022. ‘Money is not why we do this, not why we’re here seven days a week,’ he said. ‘It’s a way of life for us. It’s kind of old-fashioned’.”
KC’s View:
Coincidentally, I happened to be in Zabar’s briefly over the weekend, and it was – as always – a bustling emporium brimming with gastronomic vitality and packed with customers. Which is a compelling combination.
What Zabar’s has done for decades, creating a value proposition on which it continues to deliver on every day, is nothing short of remarkable. There’s another lovely line attributed to Saul Zabar that is worth highlighting: “There’s a romance about what we do. We have a modern appearance, but we really do things the way they were done 40, 50, 75, even 200 years ago.”
That’s something that a lot of retailers forget as they focus on logistics and technology and efficiency. Those all are important factors in running any business, but what sets a great food store apart is when its leaders appreciate the role that romance can play. And what a lot of so-called food retailers don’t consider is that the romance of food can help differentiate them in a marketplace both fragmented and consolidating.
The post A Fine (Food) Romance: Saul Zabar Passes Away At 97 appeared first on MNB.
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