In April, J&J Snack Foods Corp. announced that it had a deal in place to acquire several frozen-food product lines from ConAgra Foods. The acquisition added up to $50 million in annual sales for Gerald Shreiber’s company, but it also added new production facilities in North Carolina and Oregon, new people to integrate and new inventory to manage.
But as the economy slowly crawls out of the pits of the worst economic nosedive in almost 80 years, the acquisition is a reflection of Shreiber’s philosophy on running a business: Don’t be afraid to take a calculated risk in the name of growth.
“We have expanded our business almost every year,” says president and CEO Shreiber, who bought the company that would become J&J Snack Foods at a bankruptcy court in 1971, and grew it to $696 million in net sales last year. “Sure, we’ve been through three — or four or five — economic downturns, and we know it’s occasionally going to be bumpy out there. But we’re not going to manage our business out of fear, we’re not going to crawl into a hole and wait until it’s over. We’re going to expand our niches and expand our portfolio of products.”
Lean economic times may prevent you from spearheading across-the-board growth. You might find that certain areas of your business are treading water better than others. But you should, if at all possible, look for the select few growth opportunities that still make sense for your business, and capitalize on them.
At J&J Snack Foods, finding those growth opportunities means listening to customers, allowing team members to innovate, and maintaining a business structure that is always ready for growth and expansion.
“It is tough to grow a business and maintain levels of profitability when you’re faced with cyclical adjustments with respect to the economy and sales,” Shreiber says. “The fact that we’ve been able to meet those challenges speaks volumes for our people, our customers, our partners and our suppliers.”
Serve your customers
With a portfolio of products that includes cookies, soft pretzels and frozen beverages, Shreiber’s company has felt the pinch of consumers reining in their spending on trips to the supermarket. As more consumers stripped their shopping trips down to the basics of meat, vegetables, bread and milk, snack foods became expendable items on many families’ shopping lists.
“We realize that our products are not mainstay items,” Shreiber says. “They’re not meat and potatoes. They’re impulse items; they’re treat items. All of our items are not part of the everyday shopping experience.”
As shrinking budgets altered the way consumers spent, Shreiber and his leadership team have had to find new consumer touch points. They’ve had to look past the traditional concept of selling snacks in packages in a store aisle.
Customer feedback pointed Shreiber toward spaces where consumers were more likely to buy snack foods — such as sporting events, theme parks and schools.
“Now, we’ve developed a big presence in sports venues, from high school all the way to the professional ranks,” he says. “We have a big presence in sports, leisure and entertainment. With schools, we’ve had to reformulate several of our product lines that were being sold to school and education systems. We’ve had to eliminate most of the sugars, reduce some of the fats and reform some of our standards. But we’ve done it, all the while maintaining our sharpness and edge.”
The traditional method of soliciting customer feedback has been to collect it in the field, utilizing a salesperson at the customer interface point, talking to consumers and store operators about what they want and need. However, like the heads of many large companies, Shreiber has formalized the system beyond that.
“It’s a matter of getting good feedback, good marketing, good interactivity and good integration between our marketing people and our salespeople in the field,” he says. “Today, our research and development department likes to measure the opportunity that is being requested. We operate 12 plants throughout the country, so in that situation, you have to know where the request came from and start to get a reading on how you can best implement the thought and idea. That process has allowed us to invent new products, expand our product lines and development. I believe a good company has to take the box, shake it up and down, and reinvent itself from time to time. That’s where customer feedback comes in. They’re the people who are buying our products every day, somewhere, in some venue.”
Invest in growth
Even as the economy has faltered and Shreiber’s team has had to get more creative about finding new sales avenues, Schreiber has still maintained a willingness to invest in his company’s future. It is a major reason why J&J Snack Foods has remained in growth mode each year, regardless of the economic climate.
You might not always be able to invest large sums of money in large-scale growth initiatives, but if you are able to save what you can and carefully select the time to strike, you can still make a move with a lasting positive impact for your business.
“You do have to budget,” Shreiber says. “I like to say we’re flexible, but we’ve also been very conservative over the years. We don’t spend more than we earn, we’ve eschewed debt and stayed solvent. If you don’t shoulder a lot of debt, you give yourself more flexibility. We’ve had the availability of both cash and credit to look at expansion.”
Growth opportunities can help you expand on an existing area of strength, or can help you broaden your product offering. In Shreiber’s case, he’s looking for product lines that can supplement his company’s existing portfolio.
“If you look at a good football team with good management, they’ll find the missing pieces,” Shreiber says. “The good teams will do it constantly all the time. It’s a matter of making your resources fit properly. Occasionally, we’ll look at a dozen to 15 things before we think we’ll have found something that fits us — the right company, the right location or the right portfolio of products.”
Investing in new growth also means investing in the people involved. Shreiber refers to it as “installing new batteries” in the people, particularly if growth means acquiring a new business unit.
“We want to kind of give them a new energy,” he says. “That’s the whole point of installing new batteries. In the case of the recent ConAgra acquisition, we brought our key plant people to visit us here at our headquarters just before we closed on the business. We had two or three days of sales and strategy meetings, and had some of their other people visit our facilities.”
Shreiber’s staff and the incoming unit leaders collaborated on a series of lists, between 10 and 12 items in length, each with a 100-day goal in mind. At the end of the fiscal year, Shreiber and his team reviewed the progress against the stated goals.
“Above all, you’re looking at how this product line fits in with what we’re doing, how you’re getting the message out to existing customers in areas that you weren’t operating in before, and how we’re getting it out to new customers,” Shreiber says. “I’m cautiously optimistic about our situation with this acquisition, that we’ll get this to work and be on to the next challenge in a relatively short period of time.”
Investing in growth also means investing in the support structure to accommodate growth. Though a self-admitted computer novice, Shreiber has invested heavily in IT support over the past decade — an effort to make his company more efficient, more scalable and a better conduit for information.
“If nothing else, that technology gives the CEO good, concise, clear information all the time,” he says. “So you can’t be afraid to grow and invest in your company, and that is something I encourage other CEOs to do. Even though we area a public company and answer to shareholders, I’m still the controlling shareholder and as long as I’m around, my mantra will never change.”
Plan for growth
Even if growth isn’t an option right now, if you want to grow again at some point, you should continue to operate with growth at the center of your long-term plans. That means fashioning a strategic plan with aggressive yet realistic goals and ensuring that you don’t backslide on the principles that made your business a success to begin with.
“Sometimes it’s a little more difficult if gas reaches $4 a gallon,” Shreiber says. “People drive less. If they drive less, they go less often to the places where we sell most of our products. So we are often challenged that way. That’s when you’re looking to ensure that your merchandising remains a priority, that you’re taking a good look at the locations where your products are delivered and that you’re delivering good value to the customer and, ultimately, the consumer. It’s almost like a running train. All of the cars are connected in there, and if something comes loose, there is going to be an issue. As the leader, you have to be the supreme conductor to make sure nothing comes loose. If it does, you make sure that someone reconnects it right away.”
Shreiber tries to plan for the short-to-medium term, but refrains from looking five-to-seven years down the road. Too much can change in the economy and in the industry in half a decade to accurately assess the plan of action.
“If you plan for five or seven years from now and you get everybody following that plan like a book, there are things that can happen in the short term that can affect that,” Shreiber says. “You want to be able to respond and react to opportunities, so our long-term planning stays within three years.”
Every business is different. Each business has its own market to serve, its own processes, its own structure and different methods of management. But the same principles of facilitating growth apply no matter what product you make or what service you provide. You have to know what your customers want, know what your business is set up to provide, and you have to continually invest in initiatives that will help spur growth.
“Every business is different,” Shreiber says. “We turn over our inventory 12 to 15 times a year. If you’re in the auto industry or heavy construction, maybe it’s a little different. But we’re buying our raw materials, packaging and ingredients on a regular basis. You have to invest in the business and invest in the opportunities you find, as opposed to throwing a cover over yourself because of the recession. Good companies are impacted by the recession, but you get through it by doing more things more often, and doing them in a better way.”
How to reach: J&J Snack Foods Corp., (856) 665-9533 or www.jjsnack.com
Giving back
In addition to his business career as founder, president and CEO of J&J Snack Foods Corp., Gerald Shreiber is also an animal enthusiast and lifelong supporter of animal rights organizations in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey. Supporting animal rights causes has become one of Shreiber’s passions, and Smart Business recently spoke with him about it.
As a child, I always had an affinity and love of animals, particularly dogs, but certainly all animals including horses, cats and rabbits. I would find homeless dogs, bring them home and fib to my mother that they just followed me.
At 11 or 12 years old, I would clean horse stalls to ride for free. I always believed there was some magic in communicating with dogs and that I had some of that magic. Later when my career flourished, I felt a responsibility to give back and do what I could to help animals.
The Shreiber Animal Foundation Enterprise is a corporation organized and operated exclusively for charitable and educational purposes and for the prevention of cruelty to animals. I also support organizations such as the American Anti-Vivisection Society, the National Humane Education Society, the North American Wildlife Park Foundation, PETA and the Pennsylvania SPCA.
I believe animals should be treated with respect and dignity at all times and I support those causes that share my beliefs.
