By: Rusty Brooks
Russ and Daughters, the long-time Lower East Side staple is about to become even more famous.
Jewish people love comfort. Good times with family and good food are a way of life. A new television project is going to bring them both to the small screen.
The New York Post reports, “Time Studios has signed a deal with Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper, the family business’ fourth-generation and first-cousin owners, to shop around a scripted drama about the appetizing shop’s history.
Joel Russ immigrated from Poland in 1907, and after first selling herring out of a barrel, opened shop in 1914. The appetizing shop moved in 1920 to its current East Houston location, where it’s known for its bagels and lox — as well as its long weekend lines.”
“I think that the show is…really going to resonate because we’re coming out of a moment where people have been feeling very disconnected and living through screens,” Federman told The Post. “And I think the story of Russ & Daughters and our world is really about family and connection — and something very much in the real world. We’re all starving for that right now.”
“I was always really intrigued by them and their business,” he told The Post. “And I approached them with the idea to develop the show as a drama, as a series.” The next step, Rozenfeld said, is finding a writer, followed by a few months of development. Viewers could see the show on-screen in “about a year.” The deal was first reported by Deadline.”
In 1933, he renamed the business “Russ and Daughters” after making his three daughters, Hattie, Anne, and Ida, partners in the store. Historically, businesses typically took on the name “and sons”, but since Russ and his wife Bella had only daughters, his business became Russ & Daughters.
However, Russ was not a feminist ahead of his time. For him, getting his daughters into the business was not a matter of women’s rights, but a matter of parnosa, or surviving to make a business. As he put it, he was concerned with Vi nempt men parnosa, meaning ‘From where do we take our living.’ According to Hattie, she and the other daughters had all worked in the store “since they were 8 years old” on weekends, fishing out the herring fillets from the pickle barrels. Once each one of them finished high school, they all worked full-time. Moreover, Russ kept the store open seven days a week
At almost a hundred years old, the store is still popular and remains the best at what it does. In 2021, the Financial Times ranked it as one of the “50 greatest food stores in the world.”
