APBL Gerald Shreiber final

Well, I can't, and to describe it if I might, it's like a fairy tale, literally a business fairy tale. Poor Jewish kid from the wrong side of the tracks gets married early, has to get a job in metalworking, which I did. I had a couple of clues, mentors at the time, people named Fred Kulick and Al Safa from Kulick and Sofa Manufacturing Company, which made semiconductor machines. I was able to rise through the ranks, then ultimately went on my own. I opened my own metalworking shop that lasted a couple of years when I got what I thought at the time was a lucrative buyout from a New York Stock Exchange company. I sold the company, even though I physically sold it and was supposed to stay employed by them for five years, they fired me within a year because even though I had sold out physically, mentally I had not made that adjustment. In short order, within a month or two, I was looking for another opportunity and I stumbled onto a small bankrupt soft pretzel company. It had eight employees, some very old baking equipment, and $400,000. But there was like a magnet that kept pulling me to it. Ultimately, I went into a court proceeding, a bankruptcy court proceeding, and believe it or not, I raised my hand and I was the successful bidder. I paid all of $72,000, $100,000 for the company. Thus began my odyssey into the soft pretzel business, which later grew to a lot of other products, some of them right here that we're talking about today. That was 43 years, 8 months, and 23 days ago. Today we're a public company with sales approaching close to a billion dollars, and we've had 43 straight years of growth with profits.

Well, I appreciate the compliment, and with all due respect, we are one of the leading frozen snack food producers. My goals in the very beginning was to build a big company and to make my family proud of me. When I say my family, my mother, my father, today my children, I have three children, six grandchildren, my girlfriend who was in the room. But along the way, we created a dynamic company with terrific products and great people, and it is a combination that works. Many years ago, when we first got into the business, I tried to figure out what would be our goals, what did we want to become, and I came up with three or four different criteria which today have become strengths. One, we wanted to have niche products, certainly soft pretzels and our churros and our frozen beverages are all niche products. Secondly, we wanted to be the low-cost producer so we could meet any kind of challenges that would come from within our industry or from those wanting to get into our space. Thirdly, and equally as important, I wanted to dominate, and maybe that's a poor word, but I certainly wanted to be a leader in the marketing and the distribution, because you can make a good product, you can have the best systems in there, ultimately you got to market it and sell it. We are complemented by great marketing staff and a great logistics or distribution system.

Well, the three key points that I just mentioned: niche products, be a low-cost producer, and then have the best people that can not only create the message but create the message from within so that our people that are structured with them or under them are able to take that to our customers, to the general public.

Well, in addition to God's blessing, which has to be a part of that, and I'm not a religious person although I have a strong heritage and a strong cultural respect for that, good people, certainly good planning and execution, and always look at tomorrow, the future, even while you're working on today. When I say good people, people who are smart, people that work hard, people that have honesty, integrity, that will complement me and will certainly help the company grow.

Well, not necessarily in this order, but one of the best parts of my job, and I didn't mention this earlier, but I live on a farm and I have seven dogs, all rescues. Being the president and CEO and majority shareholder, I get a privilege nobody else gets: I can bring in a dog or a couple dogs with me every day, they hang in my office. No matter how good my day is, they make it a little bit better, and no matter how bad my day is, they kind of ease the burden. But in addition to that, I get a great amount of emotional fulfillment watching the business grow, watching my people grow, making sure that they are challenged and making sure that I'm equal to the challenges that I'm throwing out to them either directly or indirectly.

Well, I'll go back to one of the criteria that we spoke about early: have good people in good places, give them the responsibility, measure them. There's a lot of ways you can measure things. You can look at a production line out there and measure output and throughput per hour, or you can look at the organization as a whole on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, and measure their performance based on sales and profits. By any standard, J&J Snack Foods, the company that I founded, that I'm still an integral part of, gets excellent ratings on all of these things. We're a public company today, we are held with esteem and regard by Wall Street. We've had 43 straight years of sales growth, we've had 172 straight quarters of profitability. So that is indeed a measurement. But I don't want all of our measuring tools to be based on finances, on profits. I want it to be based on what do we touch, what do we do, how do our people grow with us. If you walked into our building today, you'll see a big chart on that wall with 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 year awards. That's rare in any company, it's particularly rare for a little company from Pennsauken, New Jersey that today has a national, perhaps an international reach.

Well, to begin with, I try and make sure that the filtering process that goes from me to my closest management staff, that they understand what we need within the company, what kind of people that we want to hire to grow with us. Generally, we're right on mark. It's very rare that once people last a year or two here that they leave, because they have been thoroughly vetted. So we're looking for people that are bright, but they don't have to be brilliant. We're looking for people that have a good work ethic, that are not afraid to get their hands dirty, they're not afraid to lead others as well as themselves. And we're looking for the special integrity that comes along with our culture of working hard, having a little bit of fun, but making sure that their efforts are part of a combined entity. I like to think that the speed of the leader, that would be me, determines the speed of the pack. And notwithstanding the boot that I have to wear now because of a stress fracture, I think indeed my pack moves very swiftly. Sometimes I have to discipline myself to keep up with them today.

Yes, I have thought about that, and particularly as I creep older every year, I'm a young 73, but I look to succession and I have been planning for it. Because this company, notwithstanding our rich history, I not only want this company to survive after I am retired or gone, but I want it to thrive. So there are a couple of key individuals within our company that I am grooming for the future to take over in my shoes, hopefully though without having the where cast or boot.

It's been my pleasure, and I thank you.