Arnold Greenberg (Snapple)
Arnold Greenberg | |
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Nationality | American |
Arnold Shepard Greenberg (September 2, 1932 – October 26, 2012) was an American businessman who co-founded Snapple, a brand of tea and juice drinks, in the 1970s with Leonard Marsh, his former high school classmate, and Hyman Golden, who was Marsh's brother-in-law.[1][2] Greenberg later became the vice president and chief operating officer of the Snapple Corporation and retired after the 1994 acquisition of the brand to Quaker Oats.[1]
Biography
Greenberg was born in 1932 in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in the New York City borough's Brownsville neighborhood.[1] He attended Samuel J. Tilden High School in East Flatbush.[1] His father owned a store in Manhattan's East Village located on First Avenue near St. Mark's Place.[1] The store sold mainstays of the city's traditional Jewish cuisine, including pickles, herring and lox.[1] Arnold Greenberg was running the day-to-day operations of his father's store by the 1950s.[1]
Greenberg changed the business into a health food store in the 1960s as the neighborhood transitioned from largely Jewish into a hippie enclave.[1] In 1972, he partnered with two friends, brothers-in-law Leonard Marsh and Hyman Golden, a classmate from Samuel J. Tilden High School, to launch a new business, Unadulterated Food Products, which would later become known Snapple.[1]
Greenberg died from a long battle with cancer in New York City on October 26, 2012, at the age of 80.[1] He was survived by his second wife, Roberta Budoff; two daughters from his first marriage to his late first wife, Susan Minster and Robin Nijankin; his brother, Herbert; three stepchildren; and fourteen grandchildren. He was predeceased by his first wife, Marilyn Parmet, who died in 1993, and their son, Michael Greenberg. A resident of Delray Beach, Florida, Greenberg also kept homes in Southampton, New York and Manhattan.[1]