‘Lord of Panzer’s’ Peter Vogl dies aged 82

Tributes have been paid to Peter Vogl, dubbed the “Lord of Panzer’s” – the Jewish food emporium to the stars – who died on Tuesday, aged 82.

The delicatessen, recently described by The Independent as “a bastion of bagels, smoked salmon and old-school charm”, this year celebrates the 70th anniversary of its site in St John’s Wood, which “Peter Panzer” ran for almost half a century.

It was co-founded by his father, Walter, who arrived in 1939 as a penniless refugee from Czechoslovakia and took over the grocery shop Green’s on Cricklewood Broadway. Mr Panzer, an Austrian refugee, came to work for Walter after the war, and they launched the first Panzer’s shops in Cricklewood and Willesden Green before opening on Circus Road in NW8 in 1956, when Peter was 13.

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He committed himself to the business full-time in 1964, having enjoyed a year in the US “learning the supermarket trade” and spending the rest of his life taking inspiration from retailers in Manhattan, Milan, Tokyo, Kerala, Myanmar and Buenos Aires.

“Many of our customers were European Jews, and I clearly remember being reproached for selling German foods,” he wrote in a self-published memoir, Autobiography of a Deli, in 2016. “They also objected to the name Panzer’s” – the same as that of a German tank – “which probably means little to young people today.”

Vogl sold 6,000 handmade bagels a week, supplied caviar that was sold to Barbra Streisand and Kensington Palace, delivered smoked salmon to his clients’ private jets, employed Charlie Chaplin’s son and appeared on the BBC’s Kilroy talk show to discuss shoplifting.

He counted Jewish stars, including Howard Jacobson, Denis Norden, Bernard Kops and Jonathan Miller, among his loyal customers. Then there was “a very scruffy-looking fellow”; he asked to leave the shop with the signature bottle-green awning. “Apparently, it was one of the Gallagher brothers of Oasis. Was I to know?”

Paul McCartney was also a regular, asking Vogl to bring over a freezer full of Häagen-Dazs for him, while his wife Linda “came in to inspect the sales of her frozen soya food products”. Such was the calibre of the clientele that one customer, a scenic painter for the Royal Ballet, settled her debt in exchange for one of her artworks.

Less successful was his venture into Jewish condiments; after he bought a pickled cucumber factory in the East End, says his brother Frank, “to appeal to what he would have called the heimishe instinct of the shop.” Peter grew up in this continental European, Jewish, German-speaking, bridge-playing family.”

Vogl recalled, “I loved going to Hackney, buying horseradish from gypsies and cucumbers from Holland. I thought we could sell these foods in the wider supermarket field. My wife, on the other hand, thought there was no future in herrings and chrain, and of course she was right.”

His niece, artist Julia Vogl, remembers a man of “bottomless empathy” with whom she volunteered at his shul’s asylum seekers’ drop-in. Frank, the co-founder of Transparency International, says his elder brother always said yes to requests for charitable donations, “but he never ever spoke about it.” He adds that his kindness extended “even to the old lady who once came to the shop carrying a challah, which she declared she had bought a week ago but that it was now stale.” With a smile and no comment, Peter gave her a fresh loaf.”

Vogl sold Panzer’s in 2015 to David Josephs, who told the Financial Times last year that he “had known Peter since my grandparents brought me here for smoked salmon and bagels on Sunday mornings in a pram”.

In his spare time, he was a member of the Board of Deputies and on the board of directors of West London Synagogue.

Memories of Vogl have been shared online by public figures, including comedian and actress Sindhu Vee and The Apprentice businesswoman Linda Plant, who said: “He was simply the unforgettable legend of Panzer.”

Vogl was married to Stephanie Folkson for more than 40 years. Following her death, he found love with Maureen Butterworth, whom he had first met at a holiday camp when they were teenagers. He is also survived by his son James and grandsons Zac and Jacob.