Saul Zabar’s death on October 7 2025 at age 97, brought back memories of my interviewing him about his unique leadership of Zabar’s – the incomparable grocery/deli at W. 80th and Broadway.
Over numerous decades, under Saul’s leadership, the store drew thousands of Manhattanites and tourists. As one food critic put it, “on Saturdays (in the store) you can’t see your feet.”
My book, Leading from the Middle, includes a chapter, “A Zabarian Experience”. It was based on my several interviews with Saul and multiple members of his staff, including his daughter Ann.
After the book came out, I was inspired to blog about Zabar’s famous customer service.
This rewrite is an indirect tribute to Saul and his mercurial leadership of a unique organization.
One of my most memorable interviews was with Harold Horowytz, Zabar’s “retired” deli counter manager.
I met Harold the morning after a day with Saul touring the store from the cheese stored under blue tarps on the rooftop to the subterranean staff break room. He was retired, but not really. From Thanksgiving to New Year’s he left his North Carolina home and returned to manage Zabar’s deli counter.
He took over from Frankie Cabrera, the deli manager for the rest of the year. (If there was any tension between Frankie and Harold, it wasn’t apparent to me. )
Saul termed Frankie a “primitive”, meaning, I think, that Frankie’s a bit feudal – totally loyal to Saul – and not averse to working with different models of organization; he was happy to help in any capacity and if that meant playing second fiddle part of the year, that was OK.
I’ve seen and marveled at the workings of Zabar’s deli and fish counters: customers take a number, wait for the number to come up, and the countermen (no women) prepare individual orders, slicing, weighing, packaging and pricing.
The workweek can be from 72 – 84 hours. Harold called it “a grind”, explaining “it’s a retail business…” Yet, he loved the work: “Zabar’s is a good store, with lots of action”.
A New York native once told me: “If major corporations could organize themselves as well as Zabar’s runs its fish department, American business would benefit greatly.”
When the higher ed people I managed expressed cluelessness about how Zabar’s deli counter had anything to do with their work, I explained that while we were a not-for-profit we were in the retail business; we had customers to satisfy and products to “sell”.
And we have an indirect income stream from those customers: taxes, tuition fees, or other budgetary allocations. The last two decades of higher ed busts confirm for me that those organizations that understand and apply the best retail model will survive and thrive.
Harold welcomed me into his “office” – the end of the deli case near shelves filled with knishes and strudels just outside the kitchen. At seventy-three, he looked a healthy 65 underneath his baseball cap.
How does Zabar’s maintain high quality?
When I asked about the consistent high quality, Harold was not the first to tell me about the legendary Mr. Klein, a former partner and operations manager with Saul and Stanley Zabar. Mr. Klein (always Mister) was a stickler for quality. He helped instill high standards, and while he’d been gone several years, his story was the organization’s shorthand for keeping the unstinting quality tradition alive.
I once met Mr. Klein, after his retirement, and asked if I could interview him. He declined, saying he was “not of the royalty”. While he was a huge influence on Zabar’s success, apparently there were tensions.
Saul told me that Mr. Klein would bring his own accountant to the annual fiscal reckoning! I would say that the tension was of the healthy kind and something that, if managed carefully, would lead to the organization’s continued success.
Another quality enhancer for Harold: “You buy the best” and freshest products. And, it helped that Boris Bassin, the executive chef, was “fussy”, always checking for quality and freshness. Those 200 entrees behind the glass came from the army of cooks and food preparers at Boris command.
As we talked, a deliveryman rolled in several boxes of tongue and pastrami. Before signing off on the invoice, Harold checked the shipment, opening each box, rifling through the wrapped tongues and pastramis. Frankie joined him and they felt the tongues (shaped like pink 5-pound sacks of sugar), one by one, holding each in two hands, probing with gentle thumb pressure for consistency and texture. One was undercooked; the others were OK, but not as good as they could be.
“This is shit” Harold says to the deliveryman.
The deliveryman bore up fairly well under the blunt talk – remember this is NY, a town where car horns serve as trumpets of self expression – then made excuses about how the ovens were not working like they should. Harold acknowledged the excuse but crossed off the undercooked tongues on the invoice – no sale.
Pastrami is next. Harold scrutinized each, but spent less time on them, telling me, “It’s hard to kill a pastrami!” Still, you can cheat by adding water.
If a manufacturer does that, they don’t get business from Zabar’s.
Harold ended what was a quality lesson: “Take your tongue and get your ass out of here”.
Harold’s crustiness was well intentioned, half jest, half reprimand. It’s tough talk that makes the point to the young man and to the manufacturer. Afterwards Harold told me, “Usually this company makes a nice product”.
Why work at Zabar’s?
How well you do at Zabar’s is up to you, Harold assured me. “A lot of people who work here care about what they do, they care about the store”. It’s why Harold came back every year.
And, “Compared to the fucking turkey you might get elsewhere (at year’s end), here you get a genuine bonus!”
Serving the customer.
Zabar’s is a retail business, Harold explained. The business rules are simple: you get customers, treat them nicely, and bend over backwards if you have to, and, get the money.
Zabar’s regular customers are knowledgeable and demanding. Everyone wants the best cut – from the middle. But, if you berate a customer, forget the money.
Harold told me there is no pleasing some customers. You cannot do enough to satisfy them but you have to overlook that – it’s a retail business!
For Harold, Saul’s daily involvement in every part of the store was “As it should be. Saul’s an owner. Can’t blame him for that”. And, everyone ultimately answers to Saul, who is viewed more like the head of a family – and all that can entail – than a CEO.
Like many patrefamilias, Saul had a temper and was known to fire people when they disagreed with him; then, he would calm down and reconsider his actions. Often he’d apologize and ask the person to return to work.
One of the co-managers told me he’d been fired by Saul multiple times!
Near the end of my visit with Harold, a Zabar’s worker came out of the kitchen area hauling a plastic bag stuffed with trash. Harold told me “He’s the most important man in the store.”
Think about that.
Harold well understood that certain duties some might see as insignificant or less than dignified can break a business if not performed well, if not done with dignity.
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When you buy my book of fables (cover above) tied to leadership and the workplace, you’ll get a 25% discount until the end of 2025, in celebration of the blog’s move to a new platform: Link HERE to BUY
And, my book (cover above) on democratic workplaces and what leaders can do with limited resources and unlimited imagination, Leading from the Middle, is available at Amazon.</a>
N.B. For other essays on numerous other topics go to my Nucleus archive from 2010-early 2025.
© Copyright all text John Lubans 2022 & 2025