By Chris Kornelis

When Gerald Shreiber walked into a water-bed store in Philadelphia one day in 1971, he expected it to be run by a couple of hippies. Instead, he was met by a gentleman in his 60s. Curious, he struck up a conversation.

It was classic Shreiber. He loved talking to people and he'd talk to anybody -- small-talk in the elevator, maybe try to negotiate a better price from a toll operator, just for a laugh. The owner told him that he was looking to sell the business. He also mentioned that his bankrupt soft-pretzel company was about to be sold at auction.

Shreiber bought both. The water-bed store came and went, but the soft pretzel became his life's work. He gave it a name -- the SuperPretzel -- and he wouldn't end his workday until he had made at least one sale, even if it meant stopping by a bowling alley or convenience store on the way home.

In the years that followed, Shreiber, who died May 9 at the age of 84 after a series of illnesses, turned the SuperPretzel into standard-issue fare at the nation's stadiums, malls, cafeterias and food courts, helping make the soft pretzel a ubiquitous snack in the process.

He used the success of the SuperPretzel to create a snacking empire, building the Pennsauken, N.J.-based J&J Snack Foods into a publicly traded company with more than $1.5 billion in annual sales of such household names as ICEE drinks, Luigi's Italian ice and Dippin' Dots ice cream. Today, J&J claims to control approximately 70% of the soft-pretzel market in the U.S., with nearly two million pretzels sold every day at places like Yankee Stadium and AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.

Snacks made Shreiber rich, and he would sometimes use his largess to be generous with his family and employees. But those who knew and loved Shreiber the most said working with him and being in his family was a complicated proposition.

"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."

Proving them wrong

Gerald Bruce Shreiber was born 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 a variety of jobs, including at the local Jewish community center.

In his early teens, Shreiber worked at a golf course, then as a bus boy at the Ritz-Carlton. He and his three brothers all helped out at their father's store.

Shreiber graduated from Atlantic City High School in 1959. In 1960, at age 18, he married his pregnant, 16-year-old girlfriend, Sandra. Their families were furious, and people didn't expect much out of Shreiber.

Shreiber's brother, Alan, said Gerry recognized early on that their family was poor and he wanted a different lifestyle than he'd grown up with. He says that when people were vocal about their low expectations for the teenage father and husband, it fueled his desire to make something of himself. He did whatever he could to prove his friends and family wrong.

He sold pots and pans door to door. He worked as an apprentice in a machine shop. He bought his own machine shop and then sold it. He sometimes worked three jobs at the same time.

When Shreiber paid $72,000 for the soft-pretzel company in 1971, it had eight employees and $400,000 in annual sales. Shreiber's son, Lindsay, said it wasn't that his father had a particular fondness for the soft pretzel. He simply saw it as something he believed he could sell widely if he built a marketing and distribution network for them.

"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 lent ovens, warmers and glass display cases featuring the SuperPretzel name to his customer free of charge. The units became part of the furniture of the nation's snack bars, concession stands and corner stores. He loved to see his product in the wild.

"It's like I'm on stage every day," he told an interviewer in 1993. "You see how you create economic benefit. You create jobs."

King of the snack bar

Shreiber expanded by developing a raft of pretzel products and acquiring other brands and regional competitors. He also entered the broader snack-food space and school-lunch programs with products like frozen juice cups, funnel cakes and cookie dough.

Throughout his career, Shreiber had a knack for finding business opportunities in strange places, and a talent for turning around struggling companies. At a funeral in 1987, he made conversation with someone who had just left ICEE, the frozen beverage company, and learned it was struggling. He started buying its distributors and eventually gained full ownership of the company.

In the 1980s, a company contracted with J&J to bake a specialty pastry, but backed out at the last minute when its parent company went bankrupt. Rather than eating the costs the company had sunk into preparing for the job, J&J manufactured and marketed the product itself and turned churros into a hit at places like Disneyland and Costco, helping to introduce the snack in the U.S. Today, the company claims to control more than 90% of the churros market in the U.S. with brands like Hola Churros.

Not every product was a hit. Chasing the oat-bran health trend with an oat-bran pretzel was a flop. But Shreiber was disciplined. He wasn't in the food business. He was in the niche snack business.

"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 and his first wife, Sandra Resnick Shreiber Kahn, divorced in the 1990s. His survivors include his children, Robyn Shreiber, Lindsay Shreiber and Marjorie Shreiber Roshkoff; his wife, Melanie Lawrence Shreiber; and his brother, Alan Shreiber.

Father and boss

Roshkoff said that when she or her siblings did something to make their father proud, he'd sing their praises to anyone who would listen. When they failed to live up to his standards, he'd scream and yell. He was the same way at work, where he would even be willing to lend employees money. Robyn Shreiber, who works in sales at J&J, said her father cared for his family and employees, but he could also be verbally abusive to both.

Roshkoff said even when her father yelled or put them down, there was never any question that he loved them and cared deeply about his employees.

"It's important to realize that no one's perfect," she said. "You become a parent and there is no playbook. And, people, for the most part, do the best they can."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 19, 2026 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)

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