FoodThe stealthy snacking giant behind Dippin’ Dots, Icee and...

The stealthy snacking giant behind Dippin’ Dots, Icee and other treats

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When Gerald Shreiber acquired a struggling soft pretzel company out of bankruptcy for $72,000 in 1971, a foundation was laid for one of the most successful, yet largely unknown, businesses in snacking.

J&J Snack Foods has since evolved into a juggernaut across the food space with a portfolio of well-known brands, including Dippin’ Dots, SuperPretzel, ¡Hola! Churros and Icee, even if the company name itself is largely unrecognizable to the average consumer.

Built around the motto, “Fun served here,” J&J’s roughly 30 brands are available across nearly every retail channel, from movie theaters and amusement parks to supermarkets, convenience stores and restaurants.

“Gerry used to say it was dusted from ashes,” Dan Fachner, J&J’s CEO, said of the company. “He built what it is today, and last year we did roughly $1.5 billion [in net sales.] It’s a good story with a lot of great brands.”  

Few executives are as familiar with J&J as the 64-year-old Fachner. He started working for the company in 1979, repairing ice cream equipment and delivering the flavored syrup used to make the frozen concoctions to retailers while attending a trade school in Arizona.

Fachner rose through the ranks at Icee, gaining experience in everything from finances and operations to sales and marketing, before assuming the role of president. J&J eventually purchased Icee in 1987, bringing Fachner into the fast-growing snack food company. When Shreiber retired in 2021, Fachner was chosen as CEO.

Products made by J&J Snack Foods.

Optional Caption

Christopher Doering/Food Dive

 

He has been careful not to drastically alter what made J&J successful. But Fachner’s appointment, as only the second CEO in the company’s more than 50-year history, provided him with an opportunity to rethink how it sold and marketed its fun-focused brands.

He has used the opportunity to refresh the company’s executive ranks, often going outside J&J to bring in experience from other CPG sectors. Within 10 months of taking over, Fachner hired his CFO from Walmart and added a chief marketing officer with 23 years of experience from Coca-Cola. It marked the first time J&J had an executive to oversee marketing company-wide in its history.

“Like a lot of founder-led organizations, [Shreiber] was kind of the heart and soul of everything that happened, and at some point it has to be bigger than you,” Fachner said. “I found when I got here some opportunities to what I believe will take us to the next level.”

Todd Brooks, an equity analyst at Benchmark, noted that J&J has amassed a “unique collection” of brands that are leaders in their respective categories. He praised the executive team’s work on spurring innovation, accelerating cross-selling among its brands and improving margins since it took over.

“They’ve really professionalized the business so dramatically over the past four years,” Brooks said. “I honestly don’t think they get enough credit for the work they’ve done because so much of it has been masked by outside influences” like the pandemic and supply chain disruptions.

Shake it up 

During much of its existence, J&J executives showed little willingness to change how they ran the business.

Sales to stores, foodservice and bakeries — the three segments responsible for its $1.6 billion in annual sales — were run independently within the company. Brands were largely siloed, too. A product did so well in one category, and was often a market leader, there was little incentive to mess with success by bringing it into a new domain where a similar performance was far less certain.

The structure led J&J to miss out on sales and limited its ability to tap into efficiencies, resources and innovations embedded within its snacking portfolio. 

“For a long time, this was a company that really didn’t do much, and kind of just kept doing what it was doing,” said Connor Rattigan, an analyst at Consumer Edge. “Obviously in CPG, the world is constantly evolving. They’re constantly talking about innovation and that really kind of didn’t happen for a long time with J&J Snack Foods.”

Fachner made changing that a top priority.



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