Neat Feat for Nepotism

Stretched into three generations with 47 male members and scattered from Boston to Beverly Hills, the Shapiro family nevertheless manages to reunite four times a year. It is no coincidence that the councils coincide with meetings of Maryland Cup Corp., headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Owings Mills, established 56 years ago by first generation Joseph and Nathan Shapiro. Although the firm went public six years ago, Shapiros still own 65% of the stock and dominate its board with ten of twelve family members, headed by Joseph, 79, as chairman and Nephew Arthur H., 57, as president. In what amounts to a neat feat for nepotism, Maryland Cup has quadrupled sales in a decade, this year expects to top $100 million for the first time.

Revolution of Convenience. Most of the sales gain will result from what the company describes as "the revolution of convenience." From 25 factories in 19 states, Maryland Cup turns out containers for everything from coffee to carry-out chop suey, and its growing plastics division ranges from disposable glasses for airline drinkers to "banana boats" for banana-split fanciers.

Maryland Cup does 60% of its business during warm-weather months--and ice cream plays a key part. Says Executive Vice President Merrill L. Bank, 52, who married a Shapiro: "The old days, when you walked into a drugstore and bought a hand-dipped product, are gone forever." Today, packaged ice-cream accounts for 72% of the 800 million gallons sold annually in the U.S. To win that market, Maryland Cup developed the Flex-E-Fill, a 1,200-lb. stainless steel machine capable of packaging 44 kinds of ice-cream products in different sizes at speeds of up to 200 pieces a minute. The company has "loaned" 300 Flex-E-Fills to dairies, makes its money on the containers they buy to feed the machines.

Maryland Cup also develops ice-cream specialties to build up the business. One new one this summer is the Cannonball, a plastic cone with a gum-ball at the bottom of the ice cream. Another is called the Madcap and may revolutionize the Popsicle market. Madcaps are inverted cones of ice cream on a stick, can be spewed out in carloads by the Flex-E-Fills, and will, Maryland Cup hopes, dominate the "sticks" that are ice cream's biggest single specialty seller.

Peace & Harmony. The Shapiros have a special taste for ice cream, since their $100 million concern began in 1911 as a Boston ice-cream-cone bakery. Immigrating there from Russia, Brothers Nathan and Joseph Shapiro devised a technique of using rotary bakers instead of the single-line machinery in common use. Borrowing $10,000 from an uncle, they formed their own company, soon moved it to Baltimore--logically assuming that, since the weather there was warmer ice-cream sales would be higher.

Because fragile sugar cones travel badly, Nathan and Joseph built a string of bakeries across the country. The family followed the bakeries and ran them as individual fiefdoms. They still are to some extent, although control has increasingly become centralized. Now, explains Arthur Shapiro, "everybody picks the thing he thinks he's best at." The family's favorite example is Sam Shapiro, son of Nathan, who tired of running bakeries and in 1957 started the plastics division.

The Shapiros seldom argue. "The best thing we have going for us," comments Bank, "is that we're all in different cities." Salaries are generally figured on age levels and are much the same. The family also maintains harmony with an informal "Committee of the Third Generation," which passes on the promotions and salaries of younger members. The unwritten rule is that when one of his children is under committee discussion, the father involved has to leave the room.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.