Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

Katz’s Deli in Florida? Fuggedaboudit!

Katz’s Deli is going for seconds.

Three months after suing a New York City food truck called Katz & Dogz for allegedly infringing on its good name, Katz’s Deli is back in court, filing a suit against the other Katz’s Delicatessen — you know, the one in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Never heard of it? Neither had we until this week.

“This hadn’t happened in years, and now we’ve got two in three months,” lamented Jake Dell, the third-generation owner of the original — and true — Katz’s. “We’ve had a pretty well-protected trademark for a long time, and it covers just about all variations of Katz’s.”

Katz’s in Deerfield uses katzs-deli as its web address and its menu is a “total ripoff” of Katz’s in New York, Dell said. There’s “Katz’s Famous Salami” at $11.99 a pound, (though no mention about of whether you can send it to ‘Your Boy in the Army’ as Katz’s slogan has kibitzed since WWII). There’s also “Matzo brie” ($4.89) and sandwiches like the “Henney Youngman” — a straight-up Reuben — for $11.75. The Florida spot also offers baked ham and cheese hero sandwiches and a BLT — things you’d never find at Katz’s on Houston.

A lawsuit was a last resort, according to Dell, who told the Forward his pleas to Florida Katz’s went unanswered. “I told them, ‘Look, I’d rather not to go courts or pay a lawyer. I’ll give you the benefit of doubt and offer you a month to change the name’,” Dell said. “They never got back to me, and when they finally did, they just kept delaying.”

The name “has confused a lot of people,” said Dell, whose official Katz’s title is “Top Dog.” A local Fort Lauderdale website reported last month: “The bad news is that it’s not related to the original Katz’s Deli in New York; it’s owned by a dude named Bruce Falaski.”

Photo: Katz’s Deli, Deerfield Beach.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.