Alan Kaufman coached the UAB Blazers golf team from 1988 to 2013.
A celebration of life is scheduled this Saturday, July 27, for Alan Kaufman, a Vestavia Hills resident who founded the sandwich restaurant chain that became Wall Street Deli and then launched a second career in retirement as the golf coach for the UAB Blazers.
Kaufman died on July 15 after a long illness. He was 87. His memorial service is scheduled for noon at Vestavia Hills Methodist Church, and the family will receive friends from 10 a.m. to noon.
Kaufman was born in New York City in March 1937 and lived there shortly until he moved to Atlanta, according to his obituary.
The rest of this story is based on information from his obituary and Bhamwiki.
After graduating from Grady High School in 1955, Kaufman went to Louisiana State University, where he played on the freshman basketball team and the golf team, was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and ROTC and president of the School of Commerce.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in business, Kaufman entered the U.S. Marine Corps and became a second lieutenant. During training in Quantico, Virginia, he met Celeste “Pug” Shipman and married her in October 1959. The couple were married 57 years until her death.
After leaving the Marine Corps, Kaufman worked for Coca-Cola as a salesman in Mobile and then moved with the company to Savannah, Jacksonville and Birmingham. He spent a short time training as a stockbroker for Francis I. Dupont in New York City and was about to move his family to Charlotte when a sandwich shop concept caught his eye in Jacksonville and he decided to open a franchise of Stand N’ Snack in 1966 in the Lawyers Title Building in downtown Birmingham.
The idea was to have a sandwich shop in the lobbies of large and medium-sized office buildings so employees wouldn’t have to leave their buildings to get lunch.
He and a childhood friend, Bob Barrow, then grew the company to more than 200 locations under the name of Sandwich Chef by 1982. They added the R.C. Cooper Deli brand in 1985 and Wall Street Deli brand in 1987, and the company changed its name to Wall Street Deli.
Kaufman suffered a heart attack in 1995 and stepped down as president and CEO. In 1998, former UAB Athletic Director Gene Bartow brought Kaufman out of retirement to be UAB’s golf coach.
Kaufman, with the help of former Blazer coach Mike Dunphy and The Country Club of Birmingham golf director Eric Eshleman, coached the golf team until 2013, taking the team to 7 NCAA regionals and participating in four national championships. He led the team to its first Conference USA championship in 2008 and was named Coach of the Year in 2003.
Kaufman was inducted into the UAB Sports Hall of Fame and the Birmingham Golf Association Hall of Fame and in 2018 made Positive Maturity’s list of the top 50 over 50. Kaufman was a member of the Vestavia Country Club since 1966 and served as its president in 1993.
His family requests that any gifts in his honor be made to the UAB O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center WTI 210, 1720 Second Ave. S., Birmingham, AL 35294-3300 or to the Vestavia Hills Methodist Youth Project, 2061 Kentucky Ave., Vestavia Hills, AL 35216.
See Kaufman’s full obituary here, more information about his restaurant career here and more information about his time with the UAB golf team here.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 7:32 p.m. to correct the year in which Gene Bartow hired Alan Kaufman as UAB's golf coach. It was 1998.
