Shooster’s Frozen Specialties Co., Business Card
building the plant. Several opportunities arose to make it big, but good luck just kept slightly out of reach. Still, we did good solid business and had some noteworthy successes. Eastern Airlines, for the first time, equipped their jets with quartz ovens. They chose NFM to produce frozen meals to be served in them. Kraft Foods also chose us to produce about sixty different products for them. Imagine our potential; it seemed limitless. With these great names and deep pockets, we couldn’t fail. But, none of our efforts proved lasting. It was discouraging to me. I did everything I could to help the situation, but in the end, Lou called the shots. Always under-capitalized, he had a
lot of things going for him, but just not enough luck. I tried for five years to help him. All this time, Dorothy kept boosting my morale. GOING PUBLIC NFM was determined to go public. So, Lou asked me to write the prospectus. I protest- ed, “I hardly know what a prospectus is, ” I told him. Lou persisted. Dorothy and I spent a weekend, me dictating, her typing, creating this document. Until then, I had never seen, much less ever read a prospectus, and I knew the one I wrote was a joke. But the joke saved the company thousands of dollars because when it finally got to a securities lawyer, I had at least assembled most of the information he required. That’s when I first met Hank Malon, the lawyer who would later become my partner in Cherry Hill Foods. To become public, you have to comply with specific rules. One was audited financials. It was always a struggle to have audited finan- cials. We needed them to be not more than 60 days old. They always seemed close to expir- ing. I rushed them to the SEC, in Washington, and the underwriters, in New York. Eventually, Lou’s company achieved a public status. For a while, it was happy days at National Food Marketers. Lou brought on some addi- tional salespeople, and I began to see a way out. These were the good times. Jack Kelly, a prominent salesman from Philadelphia, signed on. He helped Mrs. Paul’s Seafood, a famous brand, gain success. One of the most import- ant things he did was to introduce Lou to a fellow named Vic [unknown last name]. Vic
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Herman Shooster 1969
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