Guss’ rivals in a pickle while mediating dispute

By Audrey Tempelsman

On July 16, Andrew Leibowitz, principal of the United Pickle empire, and Patricia Fairhurst, owner of Orchard St.’s Guss’ Pickles, met to mediate their longstanding conflict over the city’s most coveted cucumbers. Both claim legal ownership of the 87-year-old Guss’ Pickles brand.

Self-described “Chair Pickle Maven” of United Pickle Stephen Leibowitz expressed confidence that “things are going to be resolved” between his son and Fairhurst. But the owner of the tiny shop at 85 Orchard Street says she isn’t making any compromises. “I’m not settling. Definitely not,” said Fairhurst. “I am Guss’ Pickles.”

But what may seem like a simple tale of brine versus brawn is, in reality, a murky affair.

Guss’ Pickles was established by Izzy Guss, a Russian immigrant, who arrived in the U.S. in 1910. Like many Eastern European newcomers, Guss lived in the Lower East Side’s tenements and sold pickles from a rented pushcart.

The briny bites were popular among New York’s burgeoning immigrant population: The taste reminded many of the homes they’d left behind. And the cheap rate of pushcart rentals made pickle peddling an affordable first business.

Eventually, Guss saved up enough money to open his own store on Hester St., where he sold his wares from storefront barrels.

He also developed a business relationship with the Leibowitz family of United Pickle, buying his pickles from them. United Pickle is now the largest pickle wholesaler on the Eastern seaboard.

When Guss’ first opened, it was one of 80 pickle purveyors in the neighborhood. Now it’s the only one of the original Lower East Side pickle stores left.

“This is a traditional store,” said Fairhurst, who mans her barrels in front of 85 Orchard St. six days a week. “We’re a small business and we work very hard. We’re outside selling the pickles in all types of weather: in wintertime when it’s snowing, in summertime when it’s sweltering. We keep up the tradition, like it used to be.”

When Guss died in 1975, his family sold the business to Harry Baker, who then passed it down to his son, Tim. In 2004, Tim sold the store at 85 Orchard St. to Fairhurst.

And that’s when things began to go sour.

Stephen Leibowitz claims that his son, Andrew, purchased the Guss’ trademark from Tim Baker in 2002. When Fairhurst acquired the store at 85 Orchard St. two years later, she “bought a lease, not a business,” he says.

Like the Bakers before her, Fairhurst continued to buy her pickles from United Pickle, but she says she improved them by using Guss’ signature recipes.

But Fairhurst discovered that Leibowitz had opened up a Gus’s Pickles store in Cedarhurst, in Nassau County, and charges he was using her business to promote it. Shortly thereafter, she claims she received a letter from Stephen Liebowitz informing her that she could no longer use the Guss’ label.

Outraged, she informed Leibowitz that she was going to switch suppliers and was again told to stop using the trademark.

“He figured because I’m a woman and it’s just me and my son, I wouldn’t know the law. He figured that I couldn’t afford a lawyer,” said Fairhurst.

She sued Andrew Leibowitz and his Crossing Delancey Pickle Enterprises Corporation in October 2006, and was countersued. “We’ve been selling the original Guss’ Pickles for almost 90 years,” said Stephen Liebowitz. “My son bought the trademark five years ago — she’s been infringing on us.”

Though Baker could not be reached for comment by press time, he has denied selling Guss’ trademark to Leibowitz in the past: “No money was exchanged; he did not purchase anything. If I sold it, it was done under false pretenses,’’ he told The New York Times last November.

But Leibowitz insists that he and his son have nothing to hide. “You don’t stay in business 110 years unless you’re an honest business,” he said. “We’re an honest business.”

The Leibowitzes delivered the confidential terms of the settlement yesterday to Fairhurst, who showed them to this reporter.

Among other stipulations, the document states that were she to settle with Crossing Delancey, the large corporation would allow her to use the tradename and trademark Guss’/Guss’ Pickles with the Orchard Street store, on the condition that she agree to purchase her pickles from wholesaler United Pickle and approved suppliers of non-pickle items Cosmo and Paradise.

While Crossing Delancey would refer to the Lower East Side store in its advertisements, Fairhurst would be obligated to promote the Leibowitz corporation to purchasers. She would also be forbidden to “interfere with or disparage the pickles” she bought from United Pickle.

She would have to agree to dismiss the claims and counterclaims involved in the suit and withdraw her challenge to the Guss’ Pickles trademark. Despite her responsibilities to Crossing Delancey, Fairhurst’s World Famous Pickle Corporation would be responsible for its “own debts, obligations and liabilities.”

Having read the document, Fairhurst says she’s even more determined to take the case to court. “This isn’t a settlement. They’re telling us we can’t do anything,” she said. “They have nerve to even show this to us.” The court date will be sometime in September, she believes.

But that’s not the bottom of the barrel of the Guss’ pickle predicament: Recently, Fairhurst challenged the neighborhood’s new Whole Foods at E. Houston and Chrystie Sts., after customer complaints alerted her to the Gus’s Pickles brand the store was selling — a variation on the original Guss’ spelling. Her inquiries revealed that the supplier of these supposedly counterfeit cukes is none other than United Pickle.

According to Fairhurst, the difference in taste is far greater than the difference in punctuation: “Gus’s Pickles,” she said, “don’t meet my quality standards at all.”

“They buy them from a company that has inferior pickles and they slap my name on them, which isn’t right,” Fairhurst continued. Though she has spoken to a Whole Foods representative, there’s no sign the chain plans to stop selling the Gus’s pickles from the Bronx, much less switch to selling her own.

Without a doubt, the conflict between Fairhurst and the Leibowitzes has had citywide and Lower East Side loyalties in a pickle. But with the court date coming up, Nancy Ralph, of The Food Museum in Soho, feels there’s still hope for a peaceful Lower East Side Picklefest on Sept. 16.

In the past, Whole Foods has co-sponsored the event on Fairhurst’s block. This year, Ralph said, celebrants can sample varieties from all over the world.

“We have Lebanese, Indian, kimchi pickles,” she said, “and we hope to have some Spanish and Chinese, some African, Russian and Haitian pickles, too.”

If the court doesn’t put a lid on the controversy soon, one can only hope the festival will inspire a truce amongst New York’s pugnacious pickles.