Wholesome Kosher Food Means Quality Family Meals
♪ [theme music] ♪ >>>michael stoler: kosherdelicatessens. at one time in 1931 there were fifteenhundred in new york city. today, in new york city,kosher delicatessens you'd be lucky to find fifteen.but today i've assembled three probably the leadingkosher delicatessens in the city of new york andprobably in the nation, who are also from themovie deli man, to tell me what's happening and howkosher deli is surviving
and growing in the twentyfirst century. my guest is jack lebewohl, who is theproprietor at the 2nd avenue deli also known asa 2nd avenue kosher deli. jay parker who's theproprietor at ben's best kosher deli. and last butnot least ronnie dragoon who is the proprietorc.e.o. of ben's restaurant group. so, let's see who'sbeen in the business the longest. your brotherwould probably make you the elder statesman in thebusiness.
>>>jack lebewohl: ronnie's beenin the business the longest. >>>ronald dragoon: '72. >>>jay parker: oh yougot me yeah. yeah, you got me. >>>michael stoler: so howis the world of the kosher deli today? i mean you'rethe martyr, you even opened up a new kosherdeli in scarsdale about a month ago and the peopleare coming right? >>>ronald dragoon: yesthey are. >>>michael stoler: so howdo you make that mashugana
decision to open up a newrestaurant? >>>ronald dragoon: eventhough even though for every immigrationgeneration that's lost for all of those who are second andthird generation that closeness to the kosher deli is no longerthere. the issue is we've become such a niche businessbecause of the number of dwindling number of locationsthat have been served kosher deli, we're surviving. >>>michael stoler: you'rein queens. queens is an
area with thousands andthousands of different ethnic- >>>jay parker: the mostdiverse borough in the city and probably the countryyes. but my question is the reverse of what ronnie says,you know have to be italian to be in an italian restaurant,you don't have to be chinese to eat in a chinese restaurant.why do we suspect that you have to bejewish to eat in a kosher deli? i mean you go to adiner and you see on the menu, matzo ball soup, corned beefsandwich, pastrami sandwich,
stuffed cabbage in thegreek diner i go to- >>>michael stoler: are youtelling me that you have a little old jewish man who iscooking this food in the kosher deli? i mean you havethe chefs. ok you have a sous chef. ok. they come fromall different backgrounds ok. >>>jack lebewohl: youdon't have to be jewish to eat in a jewish deli. if youcome to us right, in our store on 33rd street, i would sayfifty, sixty percent of the people are probably not jewish.on 75th street i would
say a hefty percentage arejewish. people come to 2nd avenue deli because theywant pastrami, they want corned beef, they want matzo ballsoup, mushroom barley soup, that's why they come. >>>michael stoler: weheard in the green room before that while you aresaying pastrami and corned beef and brisket areimportant, ronnie brought up an interesting pointthat the younger generation is moreinterested in turkey.
>>>ronald dragoon: turkeyand grilled chicken not the young people come tothe 2nd avenue deli. for whatever reason- >>>jay parker: that's whatthey're telling me, i don't believe that i meantake a girl out on a first date she's eating saladsand this little sliced turkey. after you'remarried two years it's not salad and turkey anymore.i think some of this stuff is just for show. you callat any great steak house
and you'll have to waitfor a good reservation i don't think, i mean, palateshave changed a little bit and i think we gravitatemore towards what ronnie was saying but i'm not sureit's a deciding factor. >>>michael stoler: butwhat's interesting is that the original 2nd avenuedeli was on 10th street and then you closed in2006- >>>jack lebewohl: january 1,2006. >>>michael stoler: and itwas due to the landlord and
everything else and then youreopened on 33rd street and then you open up about twoyears ago on 74th street? >>>jack lebewohl: 75th and1st. >>>michael stoler: why'dyou open up a second restaurant? >>>jack lebewohl: why?i thought there was a demand. >>>michael stoler: so ithink you bring up an interesting thing. therewas a demand for that the same way that there was ademand in scarsdale. now you have more, you haveseven locations and then
you have one down at theplace that the jews go to retire or the next step togo to the star of david over there. you're on bocaraton ok. who's your customers there? is it theolders or some of the young people? >>>ronald dragoon: it'sthe metro new york people who knew the ben's brandfrom up here. they went down there. they wouldn'tknow good delis as far as i could tell. and i saw mybusiness dwindling in
every january andfebruary. every year it was getting just a littlebit worse. i said, well they must be goingsomewhere. so they're either going to arizona orthey're going to south florida. and so i chose togo to south florida. i worked there last week,no, three weeks ago. the lines were out the doorevery dinner. and it's a two hundred fifty seatrestaurant. i sell more goulash and chickenfricassee and kishka in
that ben's than i sell andall the six stores up north. >>>michael stoler: andwhat's the demographics of the customer because i'mgoing to ask the demographics of thecustomer here. >>>ronald dragoon: it's mypeers and older. there are a younger group of people,there is a younger group of people coming in,because they can't afford the northeast anymore sothey're going down to boca and south florida wherethe housing cost them much
less and so they have muchmore disposable income. so i've been pleasantlysurprised in each succeeding year i see moreyounger families down there. i mean that doesn'tbode well for all of us guys up north but it doesfor the ben's in boca raton. >>>michael stoler: who arethe customers in the 2nd avenue deli? >>>jack lebewhol: dependswhich store. on 33rd street, lunch time you'll have businesspeople. people going to the
doctors and n.y.u.hospital. people going shopping- >>>michael stoler: i heardthere was a direct shuttle down 33rd street to theronald perelman emergency room, over there in casethey need it. >>>jack lebewhol: but whathappens is first to go to their cardiologist, thenthey get their lab work done, then they come andeat lunch and they tell me, don't tell my doctor.i say what do you mean your doctor? he's sittingin the booth next door.
you have a different crowdfor lunch, and dinner you'll get more residential peopleliving in the neighborhood, than late night youget another different crowd- >>>michael stoler: butyou're over there in what we would call murray hill.i mean you have the murray hill neighborhood is avery young neighborhood- >>>jack lebewhol: diversecrowd. >>>michael stoler: -it'sdiverse but a good portion of it's young. it's a veryyoung crowd. do you have
the young customers comingin? >>>jack lebewhol: we don'thave them during early hours we have them duringthe later hours. >>>michael stoler: and you'reopen until twelve at night? >>>jack lebewhol: tillmidnight right. >>>jay parker: we have avery big lunch crowd for most of the businessfolks. then there's an after lunch crowd as well,which were some of the older folks, the noshcrowd, and then we have
the dinner crowd, which isa lot of the locals and people that we can attractbecause of the branding that we've done and theadvertising that we do. interesting a couple ofmonths back we had done a big thing in one of thelocal, i think it was it was a chinese newspaper,and we had gotten this write up and i didn't knowit said, it was in chinese but i guess we did well.so i come in on a sunday, about twelve o'clock, iwalk in and the whole place-
>>>michael stoler: so therugula has been replaced by fortune cookies? >>>jay parker: no, theylike, but i thing was, the place was loaded and youlooked around and you said, my goodness what is this?pastrami, salty smokey meat, it's part of a lot of othercultures as well, it's a question of how you positionit and where you bring them into and very very happy, verysatisfied and if you want to see the review, if you canspeak mandarin, you can
probably tell me what it says. >>>they also eat gefiltefish by the way. >>>jay parker: they likegefilte fish very much. >>>ronald gragoon: thetruth of this is you're touching on the issue thatwe face and i've always said this, when i wasfirst in this business eighty five to ninetypercent of my customers were jewish. today i sayit's sixty-forty. sixty jewish forty non-jewish.if we're going to survive
and do well, i've alwayssaid this, we have to appeal to otherethnicities. now we won't get them in the firstgeneration but we'll get them definitely in thesecond generation and i see that in the ben's inbayside where i have a large asian contingentcoming in on a consistent basis. that's the futureof our business. the future of our business isto reach out to other cultures who have beenhere for quite a while and
enjoy it, it's a treat forthem, as maybe the jews enjoy chinese food in thefirst and second generation. >>>jack lebewohl: new yorkis a city that has the best of everything. hasthe best chinese restaurants, best italianrestaurants, best seafood restaurants and has thebest deli. and therefore if you're not jewish, ifyou're italian, you will frequent a jewish deli.the only difference was years ago people would eatin the deli three, four,
five, six days a weeksometimes. today they'll go there once a week, onceevery two weeks, so you have to make up for that bringingother people into the deli. >>>jay parker: so myquestion to you then is why did they come allthose times of the week? it's a question because ihave the answer- >>>michael stoler: ok sowhat's the answer oh great guru? >>>jay parker: no becausethat's what it was. when you didn't have a lot ofmoney and you wanted a
really good meal and ahearty meal, your mother would give you a dollar,this is what i'm told, and you would go to the kosherdeli, you'd have the sandwich, you'd have thefrench fry, you'd have the soda, you have the dimewaiting for the tip, and you still had ten centsleft out of the dollar. i mean, it was always theplace to go for great value- >>>jack lebewohl: not justvalue- >>>jay parker: but qualitytoo.
>>>jack lebewohl: but alsothe place you went to and you felt like you wereeating at home. i still remember this, this was inthe seventy's, we had a waitress by the name ofselma and i'm in the store and these two people comeinto the deli, was a father and son, and theysit at the counter. and selma the waitress doesnot give them a menu. i'm wondering why she isn'tgiving them a menu. and she goes to them and says,all right we're going to
start out with soup todayand you haven't had steak in a while so we're goingto have steak but no potatoes. you're puttingon weight, only vegetables. and i spoke to her afterwards.they come down, they sit at the counter, as far as theywere concerned they were going home. they were sittingwith their wife or their mother who puts the food on thetable, no one asks questions what the menu wasand that's what they ate. >>>ronald gragoon: and ifyou go see the deli man
you'll hear that storythat he told, which was impressive. but i want tosay one thing. it shows you the difference in agebetween jay and myself. i heard the story that youcould go to a kosher deli with a quarter. >>>jack lebewohl: when iwas a little boy my brother already had thedeli on 2nd avenue and 10th street, there was adeli, we lived in williamsburg, there was adeli on south 4th street
and hooper, on the corner,a kosher deli and i would go in there sometimes andi would sit down. he knew me because of my brotherand i would get a tongue sandwich, a soda and alittle soufflã© cup of coleslaw. the only thingis, i don't remember what it cost me but i remembergoing in there as a little boy- >>>jay parker: somewhatless than the twenty two dollars for a sandwichtoday right? >>>jack lebewohl: correct.
>>>michael stoler: ok i know youadvertise in the new york times. you advertise in localpublications in queens over there. you don't doany advertising. ok, so what about, and people dolook at twitter and they do look at facebook andthey look at yelp and they look at all the otherthings. how do you handle that? i mean because youhave, you're not a solo store. >>>ronald gragoon: i havean infrastructure that takes care of this but ialso have an outside firm,
as jay does, as jaydiscussed, that handles some of this as well but alot of this again is done in-house. in fact therewas a time up until about three months ago ianswered every facebook critique or complimentwith my sense of humor. >>>jay parker: we do thesame thing. there's not one time that we getanything from trip advisor to facebook to you name itwe're involved in that we don't, if somebody givesus a nice review we thank
them up and down. ifsomething is a little bit off we'll get back to themand ask them what we can do better and invite them backagain. we're drilling down into this, into this customerbase. the customers are very very important and you knowif we're going to bring this industry into the future it'sgoing to be the younger folks that are going tohelp us get there. so we're changingmedia to meet their needs. >>>michael stoler: you knowit's like when i had the guy,
he was a pastry chef who is nowin the mexican restaurants and he has two and he's planningto open up a number. it's like that subject of thechipotle fast casual over there. how do you see thenext restaurateur saying you know what, there is abusiness in the kosher deli business. now, trueit's a supervision problem, it's moreexpensive to be that way. how do you see the nextgeneration coming into this business and like yousaid you have a son and
daughter who are notjoining this business, i don't know about yourdaughter might join it and your sons in it, so how dowe get the next generation to continue? i mean whenwe were young there were, as i said, fifteen hundredyou know in 1931 none of us were born at that timebut i still remember when we all grew up there werenumerous. you would go down different streets, the mainstreets had a kosher deli. for us to say that we can't evenfigure count fifteen of kosher
delis in the five boroughsis unbelievable. >>>jack lebewohl: you haveto enjoy dealing with people. my kids enjoy dealing,talking to people, dealing with people, when they'rein the store they enjoy the interaction between customersbut when you come into the deli we sit down and schmoozewith the different customers. they do the same and that's animportant part of the business. you have toenjoy people. >>>ronald gragoon: but thetruth jack is you're going
to get very few people whowant to work the number of hours and days that wework. it's very rare today and most stores aren'tmultiple units. >>>michael stoler: and allof you are still on your first wives. >>>jack lebewohl: that'sright. however you're going to find if you're alawyer and you're working in a large firm, you'reworking more hours than a deli man. you're going tobe working much harder and
i think the pressures canbe worse. that's right. my son was a lawyer. i stillremember i got up for whatever reason, it wasfour, four thirty in the morning, and i knew my sonwas working on a big deal in the law firm so icalled him up. he was still in the law firm andi said, what are you doing? he says we'll befinished up in about an hour an hour and a half. isaid, great. i said, are you guys hungry? he saidyes. so i brought over to
his office bagels with thenon-dairy cream cheese and lox and i brought over thechocolate babka and i brought over orange juice,coffee, he told me brew a pot all night so they haveplenty of coffee and i brought it over for himand all the people working on the deal. i stillremember that. >>>michael stoler: butthat also relates to my other subject. years agothe amount of catering that you may have done inthe kosher deli business
it was more of selling food tothe customer. today you said to me forty percent of yourbusinesses is catering. >>>jack lebewohl: a majorportion, it's still the same, sandwiches,platters- >>>michael stoler: i'm nottalking about the product, i'm talking about thevolume of your business is generated by the cateringbusiness. yours too. >>>jay parker: we did a lotof, with the jewish community center of greater washington,rockville, maryland.
we partnered for that job andthen we took it over, he had a fifteen years, served sixhundred people once a year and then congressman ackermanfor thirty years we did his fundraisers in washington. >>>michael stoler: but theiroffices who are ordering, ok, i know my own office you knowthey order from 2nd avenue kosher deli, they don'tbring the babka, they just get the sandwiches, they don'twant us to get a little fat- >>>jack lebewohl: so do mea favor, i'll send you
babka when you order. >>>jay parker: it's anintegral part of the business. >>>ronald gragoon: i feelit's a component. it's a component and dependingon the business that you have, i like to think thati do a big much bigger restaurant businessbecause of the kinds of stores that i build. i puta lot of money and effort- >>>michael stoler: right,but you have larger stores. you just said this brand newstore you have
two hundred seats. >>>ronald gragoon: most of theben's stores have two hundred. >>>michael stoler: rightand yours seat forty five? >>>jack lebewohl: sixtyfive, seventy in each store. >>>michael stoler: andyour? >>>jay parker: aboutseventy, yeah. >>>ronald gragoon: sothat's a difference. i have a business that's predicatedon, it was based on having a bigger dining room and a biggercounter business although you
don't have to be bigto do a counter business. but if the need arose icertainly would go after the catering business more thani do so now. i believe that my catering businessis around fifteen, no more than twenty percent. >>>jay parker: we havebeen chasing the catering business and putting a lotof money into it for a lot of years because that's avery important component. and especially with asmall store like ours that
the order that you take idon't care how big it is. so if you don't come in atfive in the morning, it's four in a morning, it'sthree in the morning, it's two in the morning, it'sone in the morning, whatever you need manhours wise to get the job done before you open atnine o'clock that can be done and that's put on theside. >>>michael stoler: foodhas become you know very shi-shi, with the foodnetwork. scott contant who
was on my show tells me hegoes into the airport and people stop him and youknow they see him over here, michael simon, ohyou're on this, you know, it's all these things. ok.how do you get that next chef or sous chef to wantto be working at the 2nd avenue of ben's or ben's. >>>jack lebewohl: look forthem. >>>ronald gragoon: paythem enough. >>>jack lebewohl: ronnie, youhit it on the button.
first of all youhave to look for a quality chef. if someone is a goodchef he can cook eastern european food, doesn'tmake a difference. he just may have to learn andtweak the recipes but he can learn how to cookthose type of things. >>>ronald gragoon: you're100% right. it's just a question of howmuch are you're going to pay? how much will theyaccept? will they accept the hours that might berequired? although i
suspect that most chefswork a whole lot of hours. >>>michael stoler: thechefs in your industry and a chef working in arestaurant is putting in enormous amount of hours. >>>ronald gragoon: wepretty much close, jay i know closes at nine,i close at nine- >>>jack lebewohl: we closeat midnight. >>>ronald gragoon: youclose at midnight. he likes to be a night owl.it's a one shift store.
so that provides people witha life. so for example, i'm hiring a manager, i'mhiring a dining room supervisor, you can't finda restaurant that i know of that closes at nine-nine thirty on a friday night or saturday night. it just doesn'thappen. so it does provide them with a life so that'sa, you know, a trade off. >>>jack lebewohl: well ourmanagers have a life because we have actuallyseveral managers. we have a manager like for examplesteve comes in at six in
the morning, he goes homewith three, another manager, we have several shifts.actually have three shifts where lunch time we have one managerwho comes in is there for lunch and for the dinner. >>>michael stoler: so youknow in new york today there are emergingneighborhoods. you know there are parts i meanwilliamsburg is emerging you know to a different level.parts of queens are emerging. if somebody said to you andyou i mean you made the decision
recently to go to scarsdale,where would be a good location for a new kosher deli? >>>ronald gragoon:probably in the washington d.c. or boston, mass. areas. >>>jack lebewohl: i likemanhattan. >>>jay parker: i likemanhattan. boston has had a kosher delis, theydidn't seem to make it. we're doing the premier ofdeli man was across the street from what was a long timekosher deli from the theater
that it premiered in and theywere telling us stories about how it closed down becauseit was just nobody to take it over, nobody to runit and it quietly went away. >>>michael stoler: see i thinkyou know with what's happening today with theresurgence of downtown brooklyn, the fulton streetarea, with all the apartments, with all of the retailgoing up, century 21 opening up there second, targetsopening up over there and the offices going on, that couldbe a potential location for
a kosher deli. i'm notgoing to be the person- >>>jay parker: well here'sthe row with the kosher deli business- our food costis much higher because of the kosher product, which weposition as much better quality product. so it's notlike opening another kind of restaurant where the foodcost can be in the mid to high twenty's but we'rekosher you know stuck over here. it's a real big number. >>>jack lebewohl: ourlabor costs are also high.
>>>ronald gragoon: becauseyou have two kitchens in effect. >>>jack lebewohl: and alsoand there's another thing, the rent. rents have gone uplately the last ten years or so. >>>michael stoler: butthat's a problem in the entire restaurant- >>>jack lebewohl: but yousee the delis, our prices, are more moderate thansome other restaurants. >>>michael stoler: let meget a violin over here. >>>ronald gragoon: it's thetruth. the margins are simply
not as good but you broughtup a good point wherever you can find foot traffic, heavyduty foot traffic, it can work. >>>michael stoler: wellyou know i was, the other day, not too far i happened to beinspecting a building right down on 38th street near yourblock and i got there about nine o'clock and i'm walkingon 7th avenue and i'm seeing every one of these coffee shopspacked or anybody selling coffee. the only placewho wasn't busy was potbelly who is a chicago based thing andit served breakfast and there
were two people in thereat nine o'clock in the morning. it was just, like, whathappened? and they were right on the corner 37th street and7th avenue and two people in the entire place. >>>ronald gragoon: wellmaybe it's possible it's thought of as a luncheon place asopposed to a breakfast place. >>>jack lebewohl: how manymore people do i have at nine o'clock in the morning?sometimes we can have ten people there sometimes will havetwo people sometimes will have
zero people that early in themorning, it's just hit or miss. >>>michael stoler: but you dobreakfasts, which is different. >>>jack lebewohl: butpeople come in for salami and eggs, western omelet,our lox, baked salmon. getting hungry. >>>michael stoler: eventhough it may be you know the dinosaur in many casesthe kosher deli is continuing to survive. as i see the threepeople over here who are saying that it's going tosurvive and it's going to
continue and you know maybethey'll be other young relatives or new people movingin- >>>jay parker: wellmichael, one important thing i wanted to- the kosher delibusiness has always been part of the jewish fabric, thecultural and religious fabric. rosh hashanah, passover,shiva, bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, you're not going to calland get a ham for those events, you're going to goto a kosher deli to do that. we, i mean i'm inrego park, and i know that
i'm depended on to bethere for these kinds of- >>>michael stoler: for thecommunity. right. >>>jay parker: nobody elsehas this kind of commitment. no other kind of restauranthas this commitment. >>>michael stoler: jack,jay and ronnie and i'll see you next week. and youcan tweet, facebook, linked in or whatever youwant for the stoler report. see you next week.
