What Is JAB? Owner of Panera, Snapple and Krispy Kreme Faces Its Nazi Past
The average person probably hasn’t heard of JAB Holding. The same can’t be said for the vast empire of brands — a stable that includes Keurig coffee pods, Dr Pepper, Snapple, Einstein Bros. Bagels and Krispy Kreme doughnuts — it amassed in years of deal-making. Here’s how the conglomerate, whose controlling family is now grappling with its Nazi past, flourished.
The beginning
JAB grew out of the personal fortune of the Reimann family, which founded the German chemical company Benckiser. (The company was previously known as Joh. A. Benckiser, for one of the family patriarchs.) Benckiser eventually merged with Reckitt & Colman of Britain to become Reckitt Benckiser, whose holdings include Durex condoms, Lysol cleaner and Clearasil.
The love story of Emilie Landecker, whose Jewish father was murdered by the Nazis, and her boss, Albert Reimann Jr., whose fervent Nazism and abuse of forced laborers did not stop his family from attaining colossal wealth after the war, is a tale of death and devotion and human contradictions. It is also a tale of modern-day corporate atonement.
The relationship between Reimann and Landecker was for many years a secret. He was married, but had no children with his wife. He and Landecker had three, and he adopted them in the 1960s; today, two of them own a combined stake in JAB of about 45%.
For decades, they say, they did not know about their father’s Nazism and the abuses that took place at the company they inherited: The female forced laborers who had to stand at attention outside their barracks naked. A prisoner of war who was kicked out of a bomb shelter and died.
Reimann and Landecker, who died in 1984 and 2017, respectively, never spoke about those years. Incriminating documents were destroyed or locked away in a safe. A two-volume company history glossed over the Nazi era in a handful of pages.
But as Benckiser grew, morphing into the globe-spanning JAB, its past became impossible to ignore.
— Cosmetics
In 1992, JAB bought control of Coty, a cosmetics maker, from Pfizer. Since then, it has become an industry giant, assembling an array of celebrity-backed fragrances, as well as those from well-known brands like Calvin Klein.
The company gained a new level of prominence in 2012 when it unsuccessfully bid nearly $11 billion for Avon Products, a better-known but struggling rival.
Coty itself went public in 2013. JAB still holds a 60% stake in the cosmetics company, which was worth about $6 billion as of Friday.
— Coffee and beverages
For much of the past decade, JAB has spent billions of dollars becoming a powerhouse in the beverage industry, with a strategy largely built around buying a company, then using it to roll up rivals.
JAB now owns a variety of coffee brands, including mainstream offerings like Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Keurig and the European producer Jacob Douwe Egberts, and more niche coffee chains like Stumptown.
It also used Keurig to buy Dr Pepper Snapple for $18.7 billion, adding a variety of sodas and iced teas to the coffee maker’s holdings. (JAB owns about two-thirds of Keurig Dr Pepper’s shares, a stake worth about $27 billion.)
— Food
JAB has also made fast-casual and snack foods a big part of its empire, acquiring Krispy Kreme, Panera, and the parent of the Einstein Bros. bagel chain. Last year, it bought Pret A Manger, a British sandwich chain that is a mainstay of the London office crowd and has shops scattered around several other countries, including the United States.
— Fashion
JAB made its biggest misstep as part of a yearslong effort to extend its reach into the luxury fashion sector. Over the years, the company acquired brands like Jimmy Choo, Bally and Belstaff, only to sell them off as it sharpened its focus on the more profitable food and coffee sectors.
