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Robert Ehrlich and Pirate’s Booty: Resilient

Pirate’s Booty has had a lot of trials in its 25-year history, but rough seas have made this brand stronger under Robert Ehrlich’s fun-spirited, adventurous, and adaptive leadership.

The tale begins when founder of Robert’s American Gourmet, Robert Ehrlich, an ex-commodities trader, created Pirate’s Booty in 1986 to market healthy snack foods. Pirate’s Booty followed a short-lived stint when Ehrlich made salad dressing from his mother’s kitchen. The change in the category came when Robert realized that salad dressings hang out in refrigerators for a long time while snack foods have an ongoing consumer consumption.

Ehrlich found out that cheese puffs had no cheese in them and most of the ingredients ...