Fourth generation takes over as Seroogy’s marks 127 years

Rich Palzewic

Staff

June 1, 2026

DE PERE – In a 2024 interview with The Business News (Sept. 9, 2024 issue), Co-owner Joe Seroogy said the then-125-year-old De Pere chocolate shop had no firm succession plan, noting his daughter lived in Hawaii and “I don’t think she’s coming back.”

However, Martha Seroogy has since moved back home to continue her family’s now-127-year-old legacy.

With her father Joe and uncle Jim stepping back from running the business, Martha said returning home gave her the opportunity to keep the family tradition alive.

“Becoming president is exciting but also a really big responsibility to be stepping into because it’s a legacy that has been built by my great-grandfather, my grandfather and my father and my uncle,” she said. “I take the responsibility very seriously.”

With nearly two decades of experience in marketing, Martha – a 2005 De Pere High School graduate – said many of the skills she developed in her career translate to her new role.

She said her background includes a senior executive role with Cirque du Soleil’s first permanent residency in Hawaii, as well as vice president of marketing and partnerships for Blue Note Entertainment Group.

“It’s still a lot of learning, no matter what previous roles I held,” she said. “I’m trying to maintain and steward everything into the next generation.”

After living away for 20 years – 12 of them in Hawaii – and raising a six-year-old daughter, Martha said she and her husband decided a return to Wisconsin was the right move for their family as well.

“My daughter has a great relationship with her grandparents, but that was pretty much done through FaceTime,” she said. “Being thousands of miles away was hard.”

When her father said he was unsure of Seroogy’s succession plan in the Sept. 9, 2024 story, Martha said she took that comment to heart.

“When I read that comment, sure, there was a little bit of pressure that came along with that,” she said. “When the next generation doesn’t step into a company, what happens to it? I wanted to make sure to carry on the family tradition of Seroogy’s. I know my parents are thrilled I’m home.”

Though she made the move from Hawaii to De Pere just last fall, Martha said she and her father had chatted over the years about the possibility of her moving home and taking over the business.

“Over the years, the conversation was always, ‘Yeah, we’ll see what happens with our succession plan,’ but nothing was ever formally put together,” she said. “I think it was inevitable I’d come home eventually, but with my parents aging and going through some other things, the timeline was moved up a bit.”

Though there is a bit of “healthy pressure,” Martha said the company’s longevity has been a “huge blessing” in the transition.

“I essentially get to inherit a business that has been around for 127 years,” she said. “In some ways, the pressure is ‘don’t mess it up.’”

After spending much of the decade away from the Badger State, Martha said the timing of her move – which coincided with a harsh winter – quickly brought her back to Wisconsin reality.

“I feel like I was conned,” she laughed. “I had chatted with so many people about how mild the winters have been the last few years, and then we were hit with the snowstorm of the century. I’m slowly acclimating back to Wisconsin weather, and my daughter loves the snow.”

Moving Seroogy’s forward

Like any company that’s been around for 127 years, Martha said the longevity in itself is often enough to propel it into the future.

Though Seroogy’s remains on solid footing, Martha said there are specific “tasks” she’s looking forward to working on – adding that transitions in ownership typically introduce new wrinkles into how a company operates.

“It will be a combination of things,” she said. “When you’re a company that is as established as Seroogy’s is, there are so many things with tradition, legacy, etc., that are so great – I don’t want to change those things. With our product and how it’s made in small batches, that also adds to the tradition we have.”

Martha said increasing productivity beyond what is relatively normal also means changing the manufacturing process – which could take away some of the authenticity Seroogy’s is known for.

“I don’t ever want to do that,” she said. “I’ve talked to other small business owners, and they’re like, ‘You should put another store here, another there, etc.’ Everyone is always talking about growth and scaling – which is also needed – but I don’t want Seroogy’s to become less authentic.”

When working with the Cirque du Soleil, Martha said the organization had dedicated teams for nearly everything and used some of the world’s best technology for marketing, reporting and analytics. 

Upon returning to De Pere to lead Seroogy’s, she said she encountered a far more traditional approach. 

“I think there’s going to be a lot of introducing those technologies to partner with that tradition,” she said. “There is some room for improvement there and also to become more efficient.”

Like many businesses, Martha said Seroogy’s sees slow times during the year.

She said one of her key goals is helping the company manage those valleys in demand.

“In some ways, I would consider us a seasonal business,” she said. “We have peaks during Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter, and now we’re in our slower season. I think there are a lot of opportunities there.”

Upon returning, Martha said it was “fascinating” to find out Seroogy’s is “very brick-and-mortar in its sales.”

More than 70% of the company’s business, she said, is done through its locations in De Pere (144 N. Wisconsin St.) and Ashwaubenon (784 Willard Drive).

Another 20%, Martha said, is through the company’s fundraising.

With the fundraising option – which her grandpa started in the 1970s, beginning with fudge eggs and moving to meltaway bars in the ’90s – Martha said in the last five years, Seroogy’s has helped organizations raise more than $7 million.

“That’s a massive amount of money, especially being from such a small company,” she said. “We’re not tooting our own horn, but that’s pretty incredible.”

With strong brick-and-mortar and fundraising sales, Martha said that leaves very little room for online sales and corporate gifting.

“We do some pretty incredible corporate things – we have great flexibility and can be very nimble,” she said.

An example of that flexibility, Martha said, came when a company asked her about whether Seroogy’s could help with a Christmas idea for its employees.

“It wasn’t something we carried, but we did that for them,” she said. “A customer also called for Easter and asked about us doing a white chocolate Easter egg. It was totally custom, but we ran three for them.”

Martha said there are some “really endearing things” about working for a smaller company.

“There are things I don’t want to change, but there are also things I want to talk about more,” she said. “Let’s promote a little more during our slower times outside of this market that knows us really well. We didn’t really have a marketing budget – it’s been more about tradition and word of mouth. I think that makes it even more incredible that we’ve been around for so long.”

Finding that balance of growth and scalability versus tradition is something Martha said she is “very aware of.”

“It’s a fine line,” she said. “During our busier times, we are pretty much at capacity in what we can produce. But it’s during those slower times that we could add more production and grow our sales. For example, right now, we have one shift from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. We could add a second shift if needed. There is room for some intentional growth.”

One of Seroogy’s recent successes, Martha said, was the “wildly popular” Dubai and strawberry meltaway bars.

She said their success is a good example of what effective marketing can do.

“There is something to be said about rolling out a new product,” she said. “I don’t think we have ever marketed a new product to this scale as much as we did for the Dubai and strawberry bars. We worked really hard to get the word out.”

Community give back

At the recently completed De Pere Kiwanis Memorial Day Parade, Martha said Seroogy’s carried on its tradition of distributing more than 30,000 mini melts.

She said the company has participated in the parade for 27 years. 

“We partner with the American Gold Star Mothers of Brown County,” she said. “Gold Star Mothers was created by a mother who lost a child in combat. Vi Smithwick, who was president of the Brown County Chapter for many years and lost two sons in combat, has been on the back of our convertible for the past 27 years, waving to everybody.”

For more on Seroogy’s, visit seroogys.com or its Facebook page.