Stanley Zabar Has Died. He Managed the Books, and the Slaw, at an N.Y.C. Landmark.

Stanley Zabar, a principal owner of Zabar’s, his family’s world-renowned Upper West Side culinary and cultural landmark, who handled the financial and legal side of the bustling store’s world of whitefish, gourmet cheese, coffee and housewares, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 94.

His daughter Dr. Sondra Zabar said the cause was cancer.

“Zabar’s means to me a place to go,” Mr. Zabar said on the Zabar’s podcast in 2021. “A place to meet all the West Side/Upper West Side people — people I’ve grown up with. A place where all the personnel are like family.”

Mr. Zabar, his older brother, Saul, and their longtime partner, Murray Klein, were for many years a powerhouse of appetizing at 80th Street and Broadway. Saul oversaw the store’s operations, particularly its crowded smoked-fish counters, and taste-tested the coffee roasted on the premises.

Mr. Klein, whose face was the most familiar to customers, was the pugnacious marketing macher who drove decisions on pricing, merchandise and publicity.

And Mr. Zabar, a lawyer, handled the business side, working from a second-floor office at the store and another one across the street, dedicated to the neighborhood real estate holdings owned by the brothers and Mr. Klein. But Mr. Zabar — recognizable in his Zabar’s baseball cap and carrying a tote bag — was also a presence in the store, often greeting customers.

“They all worked to their strengths,” Dr. Zabar, a vice president of the store, said. Her father, she added, “had a talent for being strategic.”