Zabar's and the Coffee Shortage - 1976

I discovered Zabar’s in 1976 after learning that it was the only place in NYC (indeed, the only place on the East Coast!) that sold real Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. As most of you will recall, back in the 1970s “good coffee” meant the better brands sold by the can in supermarkets, or perhaps the Bokar beans which could be bought and ground at A and P stores. Gourmet coffee beans were sold in only a few specialty shops around town.

Jamaican Blue Mountain was considered by most the best coffee you could get. Although you could find cans of what was claimed to be Blue Mountain in many places, the Jamaican government certified that only two places in the entire United States sold the real stuff: Zabar’s, and another store in California. At the time Zabar’s occupied only a single storefront on the same block which it now dominates (the West side of Broadway between 80 and 81 Streets). It was a no-frills place, selling fancy cheeses, teas, sauces and of course coffee. 1976 was the time of a reported coffee shortage, and prices for even the cheap stuff were rising steadily. Zabar’s regular blends could set you back $5 a pound back then, and the Jamaican Blue (when they had it) was about $8. Adjusting these figures using the Consumer Price Index, $5.00 then equals $17.00 today, and that $8.00 price tag comes in at $27.36.

The very area in which Zabar’s was located was far from the yuppie stronghold it is today. Broadway looked alright, albeit not very elegant, but once you stepped onto the side streets you could easily find abandoned buildings, druggies and REAL dive bars. It looked more like the present day Hell’s Kitchen - a conglomerate of the old, the seedy, the pathetic and the up-and-coming.