A Preserved Delicacy

Though she now professes her enduring passion for the fish shop on the familiar streets of her childhood, Federman was not always excited about pursuing a career in the family business. She followed in her father, Mark’s, footsteps, placing education and other professional ambitions before the shop; prior to Mark’s return to Russ & Daughters in 1978, he graduated from Georgetown Law School and practiced law for ten years as a special prosecutor for New York. Influenced by her father’s path, as well as by both of her parents’ encouragement to explore her own goals, Federman embarked on a long journey of professional trials.

“I was trying to check off everything that I thought I would do professionally if I didn’t do Russ & Daughters,” Federman says. That resulted in a degree in political science from Amherst University, jobs with both the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and the non-profit United Nations Development Program, as well as some time at the Yale School of Management, a health research position at Yale University, and a stint teaching yoga. In escaping the past, she hurled herself headlong into the modern.

While experimenting with careers as varied as the goods in Russ & Daughters’ glass cases, Federman encountered a number of people—friends, professors, complete strangers—who, after learning of her lineage, questioned her decision to abandon New York and the family business.

“I was sitting in statistics class at Yale,” she says, beginning just one of the many stories she has of outside opinions on her career. “My professor knew about my background and asked me: ‘Niki Federman, what are you doing here? You should be at Russ & Daughters!’”

It was in San Francisco, when she thought she had obtained a sizeable distance, that a friend suggested opening a Russ & Daughters “West.” In exasperation, Federman reflected on the business.

“I realized that it was something to look into because it elicited that kind of response in other people,” she says. “I knew I should look at what it meant to me.”

Federman reevaluated her career choices and found inside herself an urgency to return to New York and to the place where she grew up.

“One of my earliest memories is of the deliveries,” Federman says. “I used to jump on top of these huge sacks of onions and potatoes and they would wheel me from the street to the back of the kitchen.”

From an early age, Federman lived and breathed Russ & Daughters, helping to answer phones, doing little jobs around the store and talking to customers. She came to the store every week from her family’s home in Brooklyn and helped out where she could. She often filled the jars of candy that still gleam from behind the baked goods on the sweet side of the store. There were many times when an unfamiliar face would approach her, knowing her whole life story.