Redis Pub/Sub is /not/ persistent. You can go the resque / sidekiq route and use a List and do blocking pops. But you have to make sure you have some persisten

Redis Pub/Sub is /not/ persistent. You can go the resque / sidekiq route and use a List and do blocking pops. But you have to make sure you have some persistence in place that you feel comfortable with (maybe a master / slave setup, with master handling all real queue load, and the slave doing AOF for recoverability).