Stanley Zabar, the lawyer who ran the business side of Zabar's, dies at 94

Stanley Zabar, who for decades ran the business side of Zabar's, the Upper West Side food emporium his parents founded, has died. He was 94. He died Monday at his home in Manhattan, and his daughter, Dr. Sondra Zabar, said the cause was cancer, according to The New York Times.

The store announced his death in a statement on its Instagram page, calling him a "quiet force behind our family business" and saying his legal and financial skills were vital to making Zabar's a New York institution, ABC7 reported.

The partner who kept the books

Zabar ran the store at Broadway and West 80th Street with his older brother, Saul, and their longtime partner, Murray Klein. Saul oversaw the shop floor, the smoked-fish counters and the coffee. Stanley, a lawyer, handled the money, the contracts and the real estate, working from an office upstairs at the store and another across the street, the Times reported.

According to the Times, he was an architect of the store's mail-order department and its website, helped start the prepared-foods section and was central to the growth of the cheese business. General manager Scott Goldshine told the paper that Zabar would sometimes let him know when something was off with the coleslaw, one of his favorite things in the store.

The brothers' real estate holdings were meant to protect the store and let it grow. One deal nearly doubled its space by taking over a single-room-occupancy hotel above it, the Times reported.

From Brooklyn to Broadway

Zabar was born on Aug. 19, 1932, in Brooklyn, and his family moved to Manhattan when he was 2. His parents, Louis and Lillian Zabar, started the business in 1934 and once ran five small shops along Broadway that were later combined into the single store at West 80th Street, according to ABC7 and the Times.

When his father died in 1950, he left the University of Pennsylvania to help run the business. He graduated from New York University in 1953, earned a law degree from Brooklyn Law School three years later while working at the store into the evenings, and for years combined law-firm and corporate jobs with Zabar's until 1972, the Times reported.

Outside the store, he and his wife, Judith, supported Hunter College, the New York Public Library, Symphony Space, NYU Langone Health and the Careers through Culinary Arts Program, according to the family statement cited by SILive.

His death comes just over a year after Saul Zabar, the store's longtime public face, died at 97.

Funeral

A funeral service is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 11, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at Riverside Memorial Chapel, 180 W. 76th St., with a livestream available, according to the funeral home listing.