Stanley Zabar '56, the Legal Mind that Turned a Family Business into a NYC Landmark, Dies at 94
Stanley Zabar, who helped grow his family’s smoked fish business into the legendary gourmet grocery store and café Zabar’s on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, has passed away. He was 94.
His daughter Dr. Sondra Zabar, a vice president of Zabar’s, told the New York Times that the cause was cancer.
The multigenerational family business began in 1934 when Stanley Zabar’s parents, Ukrainian immigrants Louis and Lillian Zabar, opened an appetizing counter in a grocery store called Daitch Market and quickly became known for their handpicked smoked fish and house-roasted coffee. The Zabars took over Daitch Market and expanded as more real estate became available.
Juggling Law School and a Family Business
After Louis Zabar died in 1950, his sons, Stanley, who was then 17 and studying at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and his brother Saul, 21, stepped in to take over Zabar’s. Stanley wanted to become a CPA and an attorney, but he also needed to work while attending law school. With a program that was flexible for full-time workers, Brooklyn Law School was the ideal solution.
"I am very appreciative of Brooklyn," Zabar told alumni magazine BLS Law Notes in 2009. "It had a program in which you finished at 12:30 p.m. two days and at 1:30 p.m. on three days, and then I could still work at Zabar’s until 9 p.m. and on the weekends too…The school allowed me to do both, and it gave me a very strong background in the law. The education was superb."
After graduation, Zabar worked for a law firm, Wachtel and Michaelson, and made partner after it merged and became Rubin, Baum, Levin, Wachtel and Friedman. Later, he worked as counsel for the McCory Corporation, but his role in overseeing the family business continued all the while.
"All of my clients were more interested in the fact that I was a Zabar," he recalled of his time as a lawyer. "When we got finished with a deal they would shake my hand and it was only when they realized who I was that they got excited. There was a real excitement in food."
After a few years at McCory, he decided to make Zabar’s his full-time occupation, joining his brother and their longtime partner, Murray Klein. Saul Zabar oversaw operations, Klein handled marketing, and Stanley Zabar handled business and legal operations.
At one point, in the 1980s, Klein wanted to sell his share of the business, and four bidders stepped forward, including another Brooklyn Law School alumnus, David Liederman ’75, then owner of the David’s Cookies chain. (He died in 2024.) Ultimately, the store was not sold to an outsider and in 1994, the Zabars bought out Klein, who retired to a consulting role until his death in 2007.
Stanley built the store’s website and mail-order department, allowing fans who did not live in New York, or had moved elsewhere, the opportunity to buy its wares, delivered in the retailer’s signature orange-and-white packaging. Stanley and Saul Zabar continued to run the store together, with assistance from numerous family members, until Saul’s death last year, when Stanley became president.
In addition to his daughter Sondra, Stanley Zabar is survived by his wife, Judith (Segal) Zabar, whom he married in 1952; a son, David, executive director at Zabar’s; eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, according to the Times. His daughter Lori Zabar died in 2022.
Stanley Zabar was one of six alumni whose stories of how they shook up the New York City culinary scene as food entrepreneurs were featured in BLS Law Notes in 2009. (To read about the others, see page 11)