Two Businesses in a Briny Battle Over Guss’s, the Pride of the Picklers

Patricia Fairhurst at Guss’s Pickles, a Lower East Side fixture since 1920, and Andrew N. Leibowitz in the Cedarhurst Guss’s he opened in 2002.

What is in a name? Or, for that matter, a pickle? And would a pickle by any other name taste as garlicky, as sour, or, yes, as sweet?

On one side is Patricia Fairhurst, a relative newcomer to the pickle scene, who took over the tiny Guss’s Pickles store on Orchard Street near Broome Street in 2004. She may be found there six days a week, wrapped in an apron, topped by a newsboy cap and spouting Brooklynese, selling the briny little cucumbers and other pickled delights from bright orange barrels that line the sidewalk and lace the air with salt.

On the other side is Andrew N. Leibowitz, scion of a pickle empire, who in 2002 opened a Guss’s Pickles store in Cedarhurst on Long Island. Mr. Leibowitz insists that the name is his alone, because, his lawyer says, he purchased, from the owner who preceded Ms. Fairhurst, the Guss’s Pickles “trademark, name and good will,” along with rights to its pickle formula and customer lists, around the time he opened his shop.

Both sides have retained the original punctuation, calling themselves Guss’ Pickles.

Mr. Leibowitz, who declined to be interviewed, fired the opening salvo of what fast became a nasty pickle war in February, when he sent a letter to Ms. Fairhurst, ordering her to stop using the Guss’s Pickles name. Ms. Fairhurst responded with a lawsuit filed in October, claiming she had ownership rights.

Not only has the lawsuit pitted pickler against pickler, it has also thrown into question the future of a Lower East Side institution as revered as Russ & Daughters food store and Katz’s Delicatessen. It has torn historic pickle alliances asunder. And it has devastated the surviving daughters of Izzy Guss, the original storied pickler supposedly known as the “Botticelli of Brine.”

“After my father passed away, what we sold was our name. That name was gold,” said Marilyn Guss Altman. “To think that all of this stuff is going on is breaking my heart.”

Who owns the name now? Now that is a real pickle.

Izzy Guss arrived in New York from Russia as a youngster about 1910, sold pickles from a pushcart and opened a shop on Hester Street in 1920. It outlived dozens of its rivals, was moved to Essex Street and eventually became one of the neighborhood’s last pickle stores. Izzy Guss died in 1975. Four years later his family sold the business to Harold Baker, whose son, Tim, a pickle apprentice and then master, eventually took over the place.

Guss’s Pickles had a long-running relationship with another New York pickle family, the Leibowitzes, who co-own United Pickle in the Bronx. United Pickle often supplied Guss’s with its cucumbers. It is also the largest family-owned pickle wholesaler on the Eastern seaboard, according to Andrew Leibowitz’s father, Steve, who proudly describes himself on business cards as CPM, or Chief Pickle Maven.

Around 2001, Mr. Baker said, he and Andrew Leibowitz decided to open another Guss’s Pickles shop in Cedarhurst.

Neil Zipkin, Andrew Leibowitz’s lawyer, says that his client also acquired the rights to the Guss’s Pickles name and formula and that he has documents proving the ownership. But Mr. Baker disputes that claim, saying he never sold the name to the Leibowitzes.

“No money was exchanged; he did not purchase anything,” said Mr. Baker, who is not involved in the lawsuit. “If I sold it, it was done under false pretenses.”

Andrew Leibowitz set up Crossing Delancey Pickle Enterprises, named after the Amy Irving movie that was filmed at Guss’s Pickles, then on Essex Street. He opened the Cedarhurst store and began selling Guss’s Pickles nationwide.

In January 2004, Mr. Baker decided to get out of the pickle business to care for his ill mother in Florida. He sold the Lower East Side Guss’s Pickles to Ms. Fairhurst, whose son, Roger Janin, had worked in the shop for years. She got the recipes, too.

Keeping Guss’s Pickles in the Lower East Side was paramount, Mr. Baker said. “Its roots are in Manhattan,” he said.

Ms. Fairhurst and Mr. Janin adhere painstakingly to the store’s traditional ways, selling pickled vegetables year-round from barrels outside the store and closing for Shabbat, though they are not Jewish. “It’s always been that way,” she said. “Down here, it’s not much left. We’re the last of the old-time pickle makers, and everybody knows it.”

Everything was going well, she said, until she received a letter from Andrew Leibowitz in February warning her that she could no longer represent herself as the owner of Guss’s Pickles. “I was dumbfounded,” she said. Then she saw Andrew Leibowitz’s Web site, www.gusspickle.com, which declares, “Others claim to be Guss’ Pickles or affiliated with Guss Pickles, but that is not true!”

Ms. Fairhurst found another supplier and stopped buying cucumbers from United Pickle in the summer, though she continued to use the Guss recipe. Mr. Zipkin said any remaining right that Ms. Fairhurst might have had to say that she was selling Guss’s Pickles was lost after she switched suppliers.

“We’re not the big bad guys,” Mr. Zipkin said. “We’re just the true owners.”

While the pickle standoff continues, both stores are still selling what each claims are authentic Guss’s Pickles. Lower East Side locals, for their part, said they cannot imagine the neighborhood without Guss’s.

“This is something that is integral,” said Dara Lehon, deputy executive director of the Lower East Side Business Improvement District. “You can’t come to the Lower East Side without having a Guss pickle.”