In the early 1970s, Gerald Shreiber built his fledgling snack food
manufacturing company on one cornerstone product: soft pretzels.
Shreiber, founder, president and CEO of J&J Snack Foods
Corp., says that back then, soft pretzels basically had no variety.
They were some shade of brown, had a chewy texture and were
probably covered in large, white salt granules.
Scores of companies made them and sold them pretty much
the same way. If you didn’t have a loyal customer base or some
way to differentiate your product from the many others on the
market, you probably had a hard time taking a bite out of the
soft-pretzel market. It was the definition of a commodity.
In order to grow the company, Shreiber needed to either come
up with new products, new takes on established products or purchase companies who made products compatible with his company.
Shreiber’s answer? All three.
“We’ve done some of our growth organically, some of it by acquisitions, and more and more, we’re gearing ourselves toward innovation,” he says. “We’ve started to move toward innovation through
product extensions of what we’re in, new ideas coming from the
product lines we’re growing in.”
Along the way, Shreiber has discovered that a pretzel isn’t just a
pretzel when combined with innovation and a forward-thinking
leadership philosophy.
“Today, we are making (soft pretzels) in different sizes, shapes and
forms, to the point that one SKU has become 35 to 40 different SKUs
in our soft-pretzel category alone,” he says. “On top of that, we’ve had
maybe a half-dozen attempts to further grow that category that
weren’t ultimately successful.”
From humble soft-pretzel beginnings, J&J Snack Foods has grown
and diversified to the point that the company now offers a wide
array of snack foods, frozen foods and beverages. Shreiber says that
while every company has different needs and different goals, the
need to grow creatively is universal and speaks to the visionary
mentality that every CEO should cultivate.