Gerald B. Shreiber and the value of a little extra

Gerald B. Shreiber went into a mattress store and came away with a lead on a bankrupt pretzel company. A salesman mentioned the auction. Shreiber went along. On September 27, 1971, he paid $72,100 for the assets of J&J Pretzel Co. His purchase included eight employees, tired baking equipment and a product that needed more customers. As impulse purchases go, it required considerable follow-through.

The bid makes a pleasing beginning. There is a raised hand, a precise sum and an improbable new occupation. Yet the more revealing part of Shreiber’s story happened before the courtroom, when his father was selling produce and teaching him how to treat a customer. A little extra on the scale could be good business. Decades later, the same instinct would turn up in employee scholarships and a university gift.

An auction with eight employees attached

Shreiber had acquired a small operation in South Jersey, with all the ordinary problems that the word “bankrupt” suggests. He set about improving the product, developing marketing and equipment programs, and establishing national distribution. SUPERPRETZEL emerged from that work. Making a pretzel was only part of the assignment; getting it somewhere a person might buy one occupied the years that followed.

The early milestones have an appealingly practical rhythm. A Los Angeles branch opened in 1972. The SUPERPRETZEL trademark was registered in 1973. An animated display case followed in 1974, the year sales passed $1 million. Production capacity doubled with a plant expansion in 1975. In 1976 and 1977, the business developed its national distributor network. The geography grew along with the ovens.

First, learn how the machines work

Born in Bridgeton in 1941, Shreiber grew up around Atlantic City and graduated from Atlantic City High School in 1959. His father and grandfather worked in produce. He entered working life through another kind of trade: a machine-shop traineeship at Kulicke & Soffa, the semiconductor-equipment manufacturer, in 1960. Inventory, production and sales management gave him several views of the same business.

He left in 1968 to start a specialty machine-parts company, sold it in 1970 and stayed on into 1971. By the time pretzels appeared, he had experience with making things, selling things and owning the operation that did both. The product changed considerably. The need to keep machinery, people and orders moving was familiar.

Years later, asked whether he enjoyed the smell of dough near his office, he answered with an operator’s preference: “I like the sounds of the clicking of machines.” The remark puts the factory back into the founder story. Behind the recognizable packaging stood equipment that had to work and people who had to make it work every day.

Five pounds of bananas, plus a little

His father Nathan supplied a different kind of training. When customers bought produce, Nathan encouraged his son to add a little more. “Gerry, give a little more.” Shreiber remembered five pounds of bananas becoming five and a quarter. He was careful about the lesson’s limits: generosity still needed to leave a workable business. The point was to keep a customer coming back.

That combination of warmth and calculation stayed in his management vocabulary. He wanted distinctive products, low production costs and wider distribution. Acquisitions needed to fit the business and its culture. He said J&J had passed on companies for reasons beyond the price. Being able to afford a purchase did not settle whether it belonged.

He also created the Nathan Shreiber Scholarship Plan for employees. The company helped pay for schooling, with conditions about attendance, effort and continued service after graduation. Naming it for his father carried the produce merchant’s influence into another generation of working lives. The extra measure now took the form of an education someone could use.

A business built around the interval

J&J’s expanding menu came to include churros, ICEE frozen drinks, LUIGI’S Italian ice, funnel cakes and bakery products. ICEE-USA joined in 1987. These were foods suited to the pause in a day: between innings, before the film, during an outing. The company could become familiar through its brands while its own name remained less familiar to the person holding the cup.

Scale arrived through years of additions. By fiscal 2006, J&J reported $514.8 million in net sales and 35 consecutive profitable years. Shreiber’s shareholder letter allowed a brief celebration before turning back to the next year. Even congratulations seemed to have an appointment with the production schedule.

His annual letters also showed a taste for theatrical business writing. In 2001, he compared J&J’s brands with an art collection and imagined the company continuing its work with a paintbrush. Pretzels and frozen beverages were unlikely gallery subjects. He plainly enjoyed the joke. Shareholders received the numbers with a little performance alongside them.

The other executive had four legs

At work, one of Shreiber’s German shepherd companions acquired the title CED, Chief Executive Dog. It was an efficient promotion: the candidate already knew how to accompany the boss down the hall. Former employee Stacey Inglis remembered both his affection for animals and the determination he expected from the people working around him.

There was a more audacious side to his salesmanship. Inglis recalled a story about a supermarket buyer asking for water ice. Shreiber promised to bring samples. A salesman with him was surprised: J&J did not sell water ice. Shreiber intended to change that, and LUIGI’S eventually joined the range. The exchange catches something of his readiness to make a commitment before the arrangements existed. It also explains why the people working alongside him might need both a sense of humor and a willingness to move quickly.

Home was a 113-acre farm in Mullica Hill. In 2023, Shreiber and his wife Melanie shared it with rescue dogs, horses and goats. The farm supplied a different set of daily obligations from the company. Animals needed room and attention, regardless of how the snack business was performing.

He described riding with several dogs trailing alongside. What held his attention was the trust between a rider and an animal weighing well over a thousand pounds, responsive to a small movement. The former machine-shop trainee could appreciate an efficient factory and the patience a horse required. Both interests remained visible in the life he built.

Animal advocacy extended beyond his own land. He served organizations including the Pennsylvania SPCA and established SAFE, the Shreiber Animal Foundation Enterprise. The boy who brought home stray dogs had acquired more ways to help. His public giving made that childhood attachment a continuing responsibility.

A school for someone else’s next step

Education became another recurring commitment. Shreiber supported Rowan’s business college and scholarships for entrepreneurship students. He had taken classes at Drexel rather than followed a conventional degree route. Helping others study gave him a practical way to support a route he had largely made through work.

In April 2023, Rowan announced his $30 million gift supporting scholarships at New Jersey’s first veterinary school. Governor Phil Murphy and university president Ali Houshmand joined him at the groundbreaking in Harrison Township. The school would carry the Shreiber name. His interests in animals and educational opportunity had found the same address.

The gift’s purpose deserves attention beyond the sign on the building. It would support an endowment, providing scholarships from investment returns while preserving the principal. Founding dean Matthew Edson explained how that arrangement could help successive generations. A donation made once could keep participating in the education of people Shreiber would never meet.

“I’m looking forward to that first class walking down the aisle.”

Gerald B. Shreiber, 2023

His own son Lindsay had become a veterinarian. The connection was personal, but the beneficiaries would extend beyond the family. At the ceremony, Shreiber spoke about making money and the importance of putting it to use for students. Rowan awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2023. He had become a supporter of an education whose full course others would undertake.

Leaving room for a second chief executive

Shreiber had also been preparing for a future at J&J with someone else in charge. Dan Fachner became president in 2020 and chief executive on May 11, 2021. In November 2023, Fachner became chairman and Shreiber took the title chairman emeritus. The responsibilities moved in stages after roughly half a century under the founder.

Fachner had come through ICEE and brought a long operating history of his own. Under his leadership, J&J bought Dippin’ Dots in 2022 and began coordinating its brands more closely. New executives joined. The business Shreiber had built gave his successor something substantial to work with, along with habits to reconsider as the company grew.

In October 2025, Shreiber attended the veterinary school’s ribbon-cutting and greeted its students. Early in 2026, he and Melanie sat together as students unveiled a portrait of the donors. He died on May 9, aged 84, shortly after the inaugural class completed its first year. He had lived to see people begin the education his gift would help support.

The auction price remains the memorable number. The extra quarter-pound of bananas offers another way into the story: a father teaching his son that a transaction could leave somebody a little better off. Shreiber carried that instruction through factories, customer relationships and scholarships. At Rowan, the next class will have its own work to do.