Familial ties
The brand’s reach today is vast, with its footprint stretching coast to coast in more than 1,000 locations, including supermarkets, specialty grocers, c-stores, gift shops, airport stores and university campuses.
Along with being in hundreds of doors — and counting — across the country, the premium pretzels have made their mark on the snack segment. The brand earned a semi-finalist placement in the SNAC Tank Pitch Competition at SNAC International’s SNX 2024, and its Lemon Pepper flavor received a finalist nod for Most Innovative New Product at the 2024 Sweets & Snacks Expo.
It took time for the family-owned, woman-run business to reach this point. Its origins trace beyond its 2014 founding to co-founder and CEO Stephanie Kriebel’s childhood home kitchen.
“My mom was very strict about the types of snacks my siblings and I could eat,” Kriebel said. “So, she started making what is now our flagship garlic-seasoned sourdough pretzel nuggets for us to eat as after-school snacks, filling the gap she saw in the snack options in the market.”
The Kriebels served the pretzels as sides and brought them to parties as gifts. When people began asking where they could purchase the snacks, a path was unlocked for a business venture.
“My parents were 70 when we started the business, and we figured it would be this local or regional brand that would help support them in retirement,” Kriebel said, noting that once the seed was planted, it took the family about a year to scale the side hustle into a full-blown operation.
Starting out, Lynn Kriebel, Stephanie’s mother and co-founder of OMG! Pretzels, made the well-seasoned snack two pans at a time in their home oven. This production model lasted a few years until growing demand necessitated a commercial kitchen. Eventually, the Kriebels decided co-packing was the way to scale.
Building the brand was always a family affair. Initially, the company was operating in separate time zones, with the mother-daughter duo living in Pennsylvania and California, respectively. Stephanie leveraged her background in packaging and marketing to design the branding, and Lynn hit the pavement to drum up customers.
