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The Empire Builders Podcast

The Empire Builders Podcast

Di: Stephen Semple and David Young
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Reverse engineering the success of established business empires.The Empire Builders Podcast Economia Gestione e leadership Leadership Management Marketing Marketing e vendite
Episodi
  • #276: General Mills Fruit Roll-Up – Good Food Marketed as FUN!

    #276: General Mills Fruit Roll-Up – Good Food Marketed as FUN!
    Sep 30 2026
    First they tried to make a cake filling product, but figured out that healthier foods need to be fun for kids to eat them. Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those. [Kooler Garage Doors Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Stephen Semple is here. I’m Dave Young, and then Stephen’s going to bring us part two of the engaging Fruit Roll-Up story, and this time we are heading to the evil empire of big corporate food. Stephen Semple: I was expecting that. Dave Young: It’s probably not evil empire, but it’s big food. I don’t know. How big is General Mills? Stephen Semple: Oh, god. Dave Young: They own pretty much all of it unless it’s owned by Nestlé. And maybe they own Nestlé or Conagra. Stephen Semple: Yeah. To put it in perspective, just their Fruit Roll-Up sales of their business is estimated to be like $200 million a year. Dave Young: Oh, okay. Just Fruit Roll-Ups. Stephen Semple: Just Fruit Roll-Ups. Dave Young: Forget about anything else you’ve ever seen with General Mills. Stephen Semple: Correct. Dave Young: Cap’n Crunch. I don’t know how big the Cap’n Crunch empire is with the- Stephen Semple: Yeah. General Mills is a massive, massive company. Dave Young: They’re huge. So if you remember where we left off, the Syrian immigrant and his son develops this Fruit Roll-Up product, fruit leather thing back in the early 1900s. It’s still going today. Stephen Semple: No, no. Sorry. The Fruit Roll-Up was 1960. Remember the early 1900s- Dave Young: Oh, it was [inaudible 00:02:50]. Stephen Semple: …was when the father immigrated. He did this in the 1960s. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Okay? Yeah. Dave Young: Okay. But he was still doing the bakery product, right? Stephen Semple: Yes, yes. Dave Young: That you could buy in strips at the bakery. Stephen Semple: Correct. Correct. Dave Young: So in the 60s he puts it out as an actual product that can sit on a shelf. Stephen Semple: Correct. Dave Young: And so I think we’re up-to-date, probably. Stephen Semple: Yeah. So last episode we basically met Louis Shalhoub, who was the son of the Syrian baker, who basically invented the modern Fruit Roll-Up as we know today, and basically in the 1960s in New York. Yet today, almost no one remembers Joray because that was what he called the product, and everyone knows about Fruit Roll-Ups. And again, we don’t know exactly the Fruit Roll-Up sales, but from what I’ve been able to find, it’s probably 100, $200 million a year in sales. So what happened? Well, by the early 1970s, Joray had been selling Fruit Roll-Ups for about 15 years. The company expanded beyond New York. Other companies started expanding and copying the idea. Sunkist even introduces its own Fruit Roll-Up. And there was one trade publication that described Joray’s manufacturing process in enough detail that competitors realized that they can make similar products. Dave Young: Oh, no. Stephen Semple: And this was a mistake that Louis Shalhoub was being interviewed… He’s even been quoted as big mistake. I got a little too excited and expanded, talked about it too much. Dave Young: I understand that completely. Man, I get what happens when somebody’s interested and you’re trying to talk about the thing that you love and you say a little bit… It’s like Colonel Sanders giving up the 11 herbs and spices. Stephen Semple: Yeah. So the category is no longer unique to them, but at the end of the day, somebody would’ve been able to figure out how to do it anyway because it was based off of already a well-known product in the Middle East called amerdeen. But here’s the part that surprised me. Fruit Roll-Ups did not begin as a snack project. So General Mills’ dessert division was working on new fruit fillings for a cake mix in 1975, and the fruit filling, they’re having a hard time turning it into a cake. So instead, what somebody ...
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    19 min
  • #275: Joray Fruit Roll-Up – Yup, They Invented It!

    #275: Joray Fruit Roll-Up – Yup, They Invented It!
    Sep 23 2026
    Have you ever heard of fruit leather? You know, that famous Syrian treat. Well, let’s learn how that became the iconic Fruit Roll-Up. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us. But we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So, here’s one of those. [A&A Roof Ad] Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, I’m Dave Young. Steve Semple is here with another story, and he told me that this episode’s going to be a two-parter because this product has two phases. Stephen Semple: It does. Dave Young: The invention phase and then sort of the suborbital stage one. But fruit roll-ups, or as we like to call it in Nebraska, the devil’s lettuce. Stephen Semple: The devil’s lettuce. Dave Young: No, that’s something else, nevermind. Fruit roll-ups. Stephen Semple: Fruit roll-ups. Dave Young: Man, I missed the… I mean, they were starting to come around out in Western Nebraska, you barely got fruit that wasn’t just ugly, let alone rolled up and put in a package. But I remember it came on big cellophane sheets. Stephen Semple: Yeah. It’s a billion dollar product category today. Dave Young: Is it really? Stephen Semple: I could argue that probably just about every child has had one, right? Dave Young: Oh yeah. No doubt. Stephen Semple: It’s crazy, it’s crazy big. But I’m going to say most people probably have not heard of the company that invented them, because this isn’t a story about General Mills, this is a story about a little company that’s actually not been heard of much. The story starts with a Syrian baker in New York, who, quite frankly, sort of accidentally creates an entirely new snack category, and then watches somebody else build it into an empire. So, we’re going to do this, as I said, in two parts. So, this is part one, which is the origin of the idea of the fruit roll-up. So, it’s the early 1990s… Or 1900s, sorry, the early 1900s. Dave Young: Early 1900s. Okay. Stephen Semple: Yeah. And- Dave Young: It goes way back. Stephen Semple: It does go way back. And Joseph Shalhoub & Sons is a small family bakery in New York, and they specialize in Middle Eastern pastries, and they introduce this one unusual product called amardeen. Dave Young: Amardeen. Stephen Semple: Yeah, it’s this traditional Syrian fruit leather. It’s pureed apricots, sweetened, sun-dried into large sheets, and sold by cutting the pieces from these large slabs. Dave Young: I remember the phrase fruit leather, yeah. Okay. Stephen Semple: And customers love it, but it’s another imported specialty food. That is until his son Louis Shalhoub comes along. Now, he started working in the bakery, like a lot of family businesses, at the age of 12, he’s an exceptionally talented baker, and he loves making new confections. Now, he served in the Korean War, and when he returns from the war, he has some bigger ambitions, he wants it to become more than just a neighborhood bakery. But when he returns from the Korean War, the business is facing some real challenges. There’s political instability in Lebanon and Syria, and this disrupts imports. So, their signature product, amardeen, is becoming hard to find. So, he decides we’ll make it ourselves. Problem is no one’s really done this commercially. The process is pretty primitive. You’re pressing the fruit, laying it out on cellophane, hanging it literally in sheets on a clothes line. Setting it out to dry. Dave Young: Yeah, so it can dry on both sides. Yeah. Stephen Semple: Yeah. So, it’s hard, it’s slow, it’s labor-intensive, but he works on it. He works on it, works on it, works on it. Because one of the things that he found is his homemade version has more flavor, better texture, less leathery, and frankly, it’s just a better product. He keeps working on it, and the other thing he realizes is people really don’t want these giant sheets, they want something more convenient. And if you think about it, this is kind of the same insight ...
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    15 min
  • #274: Palm Pilot – Inspired By A Failed Product

    #274: Palm Pilot – Inspired By A Failed Product
    Sep 16 2026
    Apple’s PDA device Newton was a little too ambitious. So Jeff Hawkins, did the opposite and removed capabilities to create Palm Pilot. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those. [Kooler Garage Doors] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple, who’s been out digging up stories about empires, giant empires that took over the world and then somehow lost it. Stephen Semple: Well, this one sure did. Dave Young: Yeah, they sure did. Stephen made an assumption as he whispered the topic into my ear just as he hit the record button, and that is that at some point in my life I owned a PalmPilot because that’s the topic for today’s is the PalmPilot. Everybody remembers that. And, Stephen, the answer to your question is, no, I didn’t. I did not own a PalmPilot. Stephen Semple: You did not? Dave Young: No, I was too cheap. I had a cheap Sony knockoff of a PalmPilot. Stephen Semple: Wow. Dave Young: It had a little camera in it, though. Stephen Semple: Oh, the [inaudible 00:02:18]. Dave Young: That was back before … Cell phones didn’t have … If they did, they were just a little flip phone sort of camera. My little Sony version of a PalmPilot had a cheesy little potato quality camera in it. Stephen Semple: Wow. Dave Young: In fact, some of the earliest pictures of the Wizard Academy campus that I have were taken on that device. So I have these grainy pictures of Roy Williams in the woods showing me where the tower was going to be- Stephen Semple: That’s cool. Dave Young: … and standing in the pole barn that got remodeled into Tuscan Hall, all of those things. Stephen Semple: Ah, that’s- Dave Young: Yeah. I remember it was always fun to play with. I don’t remember much about it, to be honest, other than it had a camera on it. Stephen Semple: Wow. Dave Young: I don’t think most PalmPilots did. Stephen Semple: No, they didn’t. They did not. Because so many of these early technology things you’ve been an adapter of, I thought for sure you would’ve had a … So I guessed wrong. I guessed wrong. Dave Young: I just needed … Well, first two things. This is 2004-ish, 2003-ish. They came out a few years earlier than that. Stephen Semple: 1996 is when they launched. Dave Young: Really? Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: I was just cheap is the problem. I was broke and cheap at that time. So I guarantee you I had PalmPilot envy up until the point that Sony came out with this one that actually had a camera at a low price point, and I’m like, “All right, I’m going to …” Stephen Semple: Well- Dave Young: Oh, oh, wait a minute. I’m wrong. Now that I think about it, they had a cheap version of a PalmPilot that was colored plastic. Stephen Semple: Yeah? Dave Young: Yeah. I actually did have that, and the Sony was an upgrade. I’m visualizing … Because I got them for my kids, too. So not only did I have one, but my kids each had one. I don’t think they did anything with them. Stephen Semple: Here’s the crazy thing is there could be tons of people listening to this, there’ll be a bunch of people who know what we’re talking about and a bunch of people who won’t know what we’re talking about. One of the things is there was a period there in the early 2000s where Palm OS was 50% to 60% of the PDA, personal digital assistant, operating systems in the world, and there was a point where the value of the business was $50 billion. Dave Young: Yeah, that’s really nuts. Stephen Semple: They were a big deal and then disappeared. Dave Young: Well, then the iPhone came out, so you had your phone, your camera, your PalmPilot all in one. Stephen Semple: Yeah, between the BlackBerry and the iPhone, it was a combination of those two. BlackBerry’s now gone as well or diminished. But what’s really interesting is how this piece of technology was developed, and ...
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    20 min
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