People · 2026-08-26

Andy Friedman and Pam Netzky

Opened Wells Street Popcorn in Chicago in 2007, a heavily coated shop concept with three storefronts and the popcorn account at the city's largest theaters.
Launched SkinnyPop in August 2010 out of Skokie on three ingredients, popcorn, sunflower oil, and salt, and grew audited net sales from $16.0 million in 2012 to $55.7 million in 2013.
Sold control to TA Associates in July 2014 at a prospectus purchase price of about $320 million; the business listed on the NYSE as Amplify Snack Brands in 2015 and Hershey closed its purchase on 31 January 2018.

Andy Friedman and Pam Netzky met in 2007 and opened Wells Street Popcorn in Chicago with Mike and Jeff Eiserman. The shop was built to rival Garrett: three Chicago-area storefronts, thick coats, and the exclusive popcorn account at the city's Broadway-caliber theaters. In August 2010 the same pair put a different product in a Skokie plant. SkinnyPop was popcorn, sunflower oil, and salt, sold as a ready-to-eat bag for the grocery shelf. The 5 August 2015 Amplify Snack Brands prospectus defines the word it uses for the rest of the filing: "The term 'Founders' means Andrew S. Friedman and Pamela L. Netzky, the founders of the business currently conducted by SkinnyPop Popcorn LLC."

What they changed is the bag, not the crop. TA Associates took control in July 2014 at a purchase price the prospectus puts at about $320 million. Amplify listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015 under the ticker BETR. Hershey closed its acquisition of Amplify on 31 January 2018. This atlas scores SkinnyPop 3.7 and seats it at number 12, last of the twelve brand rows, because the corn is a vehicle rather than a variety.

Two bankers, one shop

Andy Friedman grew up in suburban Detroit, the son of two Michigan alumni, Arthur, class of 1960 with a 1961 MBA, and Brenda, class of 1964. Michigan Alum, in Early Fall 2015, has him at Michigan in the class of 1991 running an undergraduate shop, True Blue Promotions, after the 1989 Rose Bowl. The prospectus lists a B.A. in organizational management from Michigan and an MBA in finance from Wharton. Michigan Alum and Hyde Park Angels agree on the first job: two years as a Morgan Stanley analyst in New York. Then Wharton, then Chicago in 1995. Michigan Alum puts those Chicago years at Jones Lang LaSalle. Hyde Park Angels puts him in real-estate banking, then a 2000 car-wash idea that did not close, then roughly seven years in a family travel-center business reaching into Indiana. The attraction of popcorn, he told Pete Wilkins, was margin: wide, where the businesses he knew were thin.

Pam Netzky is thin in the national clips and fully present in the ones that look. DePaul Advancement, on 3 January 2013, ran the first long interview that is hers: Pamela Netzky, College of Communication 1998, president and co-founder. The prospectus lists a B.A. in communications from DePaul and, for 2008 to 2010, co-founder and chief operating officer of Wells Street. Hyde Park Angels adds president from 2010 to 2014, then senior advisor and director of Amplify from July 2014. DePaul called them "two investment bankers turned entrepreneurs" without printing a bank name for her, and this record does not invent one.

The prospectus dates Friedman's Wells Street title as chief executive from 2008 to 2010 and Netzky's as chief operating officer over the same window, with 2007 as the founding year. Friedman told Hyde Park Angels that over three years the shop paid for his cell phone and nothing else. The theater account taught them wholesale: one buyer, a hundred bags. The walk-in trade taught them the opposite lesson. Netzky, to DePaul: "Our best customers were saying, 'I love this, it's my favorite thing in the world... I'll see you next month or in two months.'"

The 2015 prospectus is blunter about why that shop could not scale. It calls Wells Street a decadent Chicago-style concept, "growing and profitable but also difficult to scale as the core product was heavily coated in highly caloric and dense toppings and did not align with BFY consumer trends." Julie Wernau, in the Chicago Tribune of 19 August 2014, has Friedman in the same key: they had been off-trend, making "gluttonous popcorn at a time when everything was going the direction of 'better for you.'"

August 2010, Skokie

They did not begin by naming a national brand. Friedman told Hyde Park Angels they first built a Wells Street Popcorn lite: different kernels, oils, and seasonings, aimed at a Lincoln Park store near a gym. Once the formula worked they decided it was not a shop item at all. It was a grocery bag. They named it in about five minutes.

The first bag sold in August 2010, a date the prospectus prints as well ("launched in August 2010 by Pam Netzky and Andy Friedman"). Michigan Alum has the equipment: one popper, one hand sealer, the first 1,000 bags in the summer of 2010. Friedman took one Chicago specialty grocer, Netzky took another, and both stores called within twenty-four hours. DePaul is specific about her stop. After the first 25,000 bags arrived, the minimum order, they switched on the machines; later that day Netzky put SkinnyPop on the shelf at Potash Market in Lincoln Park "and ran out the door." Within four months they were in 85 stores. Michigan Alum counts nearly 100 by the end of 2010, with two founders and one part-time employee assembling 600 bags a day in Wells Street's back room.

The formula the prospectus later wrote into a securities filing is the one Food Business News printed in 2014: "All SkinnyPop flavors are cooked with three core ingredients; popcorn, sunflower oil and salt." Original, then Black Pepper, White Cheddar Flavor, Naturally Sweet. The claim was a short label, a nut-free room, and a bag someone would buy more than once a month. Netzky told DePaul they wanted "a perfect bag." Friedman told Michigan Alum, "SkinnyPop was the answer to so many voids people were unable to fill." Wernau quoted Jeffrey Eiserman on the allergen side: his daughter had a severe nut allergy, and he said he, his father Michael, Netzky, and Friedman, his brother-in-law, held equal shares at the founding. The company would not confirm the stakes. Print it as his claim.

They found a distributor the way people without packaged-goods contacts do. Friedman told Hyde Park Angels they queued behind a man carrying a salty-snack basket at an open buying call, phoned him that day, and popped him a fresh batch. He thought he could reach the seventeen Chicago-area Whole Foods stores.

Time, not capital, forced the next cut. Friedman: "On January 1st 2011, that's when Pam and I separated ourselves from Wells Street Popcorn and focused ourselves 100% on SkinnyPop." Michigan Alum says that in 2011 they secured outside manufacturing and divested Wells Street. The co-packer mattered because the differentiator was an allergen-controlled line.

The first full truck outside Illinois went to Schnucks in St. Louis. Friedman remembered the check, the cash-flow turn, and a brand that could travel. He hired the first employee in September 2012 and said the bag went coast to coast early that year. The prospectus prints the audited climb: net sales of $16.0 million in 2012 and $55.7 million in the year ended 31 December 2013. Early distribution ran through Whole Foods, Sprouts, and The Fresh Market, then Costco's Midwest region, then Walgreens in 2012, then Sam's Club, Kroger, Ahold, and Publix in 2013. DePaul, in January 2013, already had Netzky citing 6,000 grocery stores and 7,500 Walgreens locations. Those alumni-magazine counts sit beside the audited sales, not on top of them.

Store-count language in 2014 does not agree with itself either. Wernau, that August: more than 25,000 retail locations. Michigan Alum a year later, quoting Friedman on 2014: more than 50,000 stores. Hyde Park Angels: about sixty distributors and eleven people in the office at the July 2014 sale. Food Business News, using IRI data for the 52 weeks ended 10 August 2014, put SkinnyPop at $88.6 million, up 233 percent, and still behind Smartfood.

Who the filing calls founders

Two other names circulate online as SkinnyPop founders. Andrew Stenzler's own page lists Rumble, The Pack, Lab Capital, and Skinny Dipped, a Seattle nut brand founded by Breezy and Val Griffith. Brett Cohen carries no founding credit in the prospectus, the Tribune, Michigan Alum, DePaul, CSP Daily News, Just Food, or Food Business News.

The document with legal exposure is the prospectus, and it names Friedman and Netzky. Wernau named the same pair in 2014, with Jeffrey and Michael Eiserman as investors. DePaul in January 2013, Food Business News in September 2014, and CSP named them too. Jason Cohen enters in 2013 as an operating partner and appears in the prospectus as a selling stockholder with voting power over 1,619,275 Amplify shares at Precision Capital Group. Wernau: "In early 2013, SkinnyPop partnered with food entrepreneur Jason Cohen to augment its sales capabilities and expand distribution." Friedman dates that transaction to May 2013. They did not need capital; private-equity visitors kept telling two people in a small office that they had no sales force, and Cohen, who had founded Sensible Portions, brought five salespeople.

July 2014, then BETR, then Hershey

Friedman called 2012 "the year of the private-equity guys." The company was profitable, and visitors kept asking where everybody was. In 2014 a middle-market banker told them it was time.

The prospectus calls the close the Sponsor Acquisition, consummated in July 2014: SkinnyPop Popcorn LLC, organized in Illinois in 2010, became a wholly owned subsidiary and converted to a Delaware LLC. The unaudited pro forma notes carry the dollar sentence the contemporaneous press did not print. "The total purchase price of approximately $320 million to acquire the SkinnyPop business has been allocated to the assets acquired and assumed liabilities." TA's portfolio page dates the investment to July 2014. Wernau, CSP, Just Food, and Food Business News reported the partnership in mid-August and said terms were not disclosed.

Just Food is explicit about the chair. Tom Ennis, formerly chief executive of Oberto Brands, "replaces co-founder Andy Friedman as chief executive." The prospectus is the title history this record uses: Friedman, chief executive from August 2010 to July 2014, then senior advisor and director; Netzky, president from August 2010 to July 2014, then senior advisor and director. One sentence of the filing's Netzky paragraph slips into "Mr. Netzky." The definition of Founders, the board table listing Friedman at 46 and Netzky at 40, and every other serious source treat her as president and co-founder. Wernau had Friedman saying they were "not selling the company" but taking an investor; the prospectus describes TA as having acquired control.

TA recruited the professional bench and pushed distribution into Walmart, CVS, Target, and Wawa. In April 2015 Amplify bought Paqui. On 5 August 2015 the company priced an initial public offering: 15,000,000 shares sold by selling stockholders at $18.00, NYSE ticker BETR, no proceeds to the company. Renaissance Capital, the day before, put the deal at $270 million, $2 above the $14 to $16 range. Friedman told Michigan Alum that ringing the opening bell was the highlight of his professional career. "People joke that we're an overnight success, but this has been more than eight years of hard work." The table under that joke runs from $55.7 million in 2013 net sales to $132.4 million pro forma for 2014.

Hershey's 18 December 2017 release, filed as Amplify EX-99.1, is the agreement: $12.00 a share in cash, "valued at approximately $1.6 billion, including net debt and including a make-whole payment of $76 million related to the Tax Receivable Agreement." Hershey's 31 January 2018 Form 8-K is the close. About 71.97 million shares, 95.1391 percent, were tendered. Alphabet Merger Sub merged into Amplify, and Amplify became a wholly owned Hershey subsidiary. Hershey paid about $908 million for the shares and about $607 million to retire Amplify's credit agreement. The $1.6 billion is the December enterprise figure with debt and the tax receivable payment included. Both belong in the record.

After the bag

An Equilar biography of Netzky, sourced to an AirSculpt filing dated 28 January 2025, says she stayed on the Amplify board until the Hershey sale in 2018. No 2026 operating title for her turned up on a primary page worth printing. Friedman, on a 3 February 2026 Penn Venture Lab notice, is described as investing and advising; the same notice claims "over 100,000 stores," which is speaker copy against Michigan Alum's 50,000 and Wernau's 25,000.

The diet-aisle bag they built is now one shelf position inside a confectioner's salty portfolio, which is where the snack aisle took most of this category. Hershey named Veronica Villasenor president of Salty Snacks on 13 January 2025, effective 3 February 2025, and the materials retrieved for this piece list no dedicated SkinnyPop brand president. skinnypop.com, retrieved in August 2026, is a Hershey product page, and neither founder appears on it.