Gerald Shreiber, the entrepreneur who built a snack-food empire from a single bankrupt soft-pretzel company and made the SuperPretzel a staple of American stadiums, died May 9 at age 84, according to his family. Shreiber, who died after a series of illnesses, was the founder of J&J Snack Foods, based in Pennsauken, N.J., a publicly traded company with more than $1.5 billion in annual sales.
Shreiber’s path to building a snacking empire began in 1971 when he paid $72,000 for a bankrupt soft-pretzel company with eight employees and $400,000 in annual sales. He named the product the SuperPretzel and built a marketing and distribution network that turned it into standard-issue fare at the nation’s stadiums, malls, cafeterias and food courts. Today, J&J Snack Foods claims to control approximately 70% of the U.S. soft-pretzel market, with nearly two million pretzels sold every day at places such as Yankee Stadium and AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.
“The traditional stadiums, baseball stadiums, in those days had a very limited menu,” Shreiber told CNBC in 2008. “They didn’t know what a soft pretzel was.”
Shreiber used the success of the SuperPretzel to acquire other brands—ICEE drinks, Dippin’ Dots ice cream, Luigi’s Italian ice—and to expand into the broader snack-food space. He had a knack for finding business opportunities in strange places: at a funeral in 1987, he struck up a conversation with someone who had just left ICEE, the frozen-beverage company, and learned it was struggling. He began buying its distributors and eventually gained full ownership.
“I will never go into the meat slaughtering business,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2016. “I will never go into making office furniture. It has to be somewhat related.”
Shreiber’s family said his drive came from an early recognition that their family was poor. His brother, Alan, said Gerry recognized early on that their family was poor and he wanted a different lifestyle. He did whatever he could to prove his friends and family wrong. He sold pots and pans door to door, worked as an apprentice in a machine shop, and sometimes held three jobs at once.
“To know my father was to love him. To know him was to detest and dislike him, as well,” his daughter, Marjorie Shreiber Roshkoff, said at his funeral. “I know that’s a very strong word, especially at a funeral. However, if anybody disagrees, then they didn’t really know Gerry.”
Shreiber was born Gerald Bruce Shreiber in Bridgeton, N.J., on Dec. 8, 1941, to Frances and Nathan Shreiber. The family moved to Atlantic City when he was a child. His father ran a fruit and produce store; his mother worked at the local Jewish community center. Shreiber graduated from Atlantic City High School in 1959. In 1960, at age 18, he married his pregnant, 16-year-old girlfriend, Sandra—a decision that angered both families.
Shreiber’s survivors include his children, Robyn Shreiber, Lindsay Shreiber and Marjorie Shreiber Roshkoff; his wife, Melanie Lawrence Shreiber; and his brother, Alan Shreiber.