Martha Seroogy recalls visiting her grandfather’s chocolate business on Riverside Drive in De Pere when she was a child. His house was attached to the back by a breezeway.
“He would have staff over to his house for lunch,” she says. “It was very mom‑and‑pop.”
The proximity also made it convenient for three‑year‑old Martha to secretly help herself to chocolate on these visits.
“One time, my dad said he found me hiding in a box in storage, with my legs over the edge of the box kicking,” Martha says.
She grew up working in the family business throughout middle and high school, spanning a variety of roles.
“I was the Easter Bunny a few times,” says Martha, who notes the holiday’s sales come in second only to Christmas.
Decades later, Martha is now the president of that business — Seroogy’s Chocolates, a 126‑year‑old family‑owned confectionary still headquartered in De Pere, with an additional location in Green Bay. She represents the fourth generation to lead the company that was founded in 1899 by Joseph, James, Solomon and George Seroogy. The brothers immigrated from Lebanon and opened Seroogy Bros Palace of Sweets in Green Bay.
The business passed to Joseph’s son, Alfred Seroogy, in 1958, and then to Martha’s uncle Jim and father Joe in 1981. The pair co‑led the business for four decades and expanded operations to more than 70,000 square feet of production and retail space.
But Martha’s journey to the role of president was not a predictable one. She spent the last decade living in Honolulu and working as a senior executive for Cirque du Soleil’s first permanent residency in Hawaii when her father’s health declined in 2025.
“He had some health scares, and it was really hard to be 4,000 miles away,” Martha says. “That was really what spurred my move home.”
Martha gave up the Pacific to return to Northeast Wisconsin and assumed the role of president last October.
Prior to Cirque du Soleil, she served as vice president of marketing and partnerships for Blue Note Entertainment Group. That experience translating big‑brand marketing into ticket sales and audience engagement turned out to be applicable to selling chocolate.
In its first new flavor launch in five years, Seroogy’s debuted a limited‑edition Strawberry Meltaway Bar for Valentine’s Day. Previously, new products got a shelf sign and maybe a social post. Martha pushed for proper packaging and a full rollout, and the results spoke for themselves.
“We made 3,000 of them two weeks before Valentine’s Day, and sold out in a day,” she says.
Seroogy’s also debuted its version of the TikTok‑famous, pistachio cream‑filled Dubai Meltaway Bar in March.
“Just because something has been done a certain way for 126 years doesn’t mean that everything needs to be preserved in amber,” Martha says. “But there are certain things that I absolutely do want to preserve — at our core, what we’re doing in making these small batch, handmade, homemade, fresh chocolates. That I never want to change.”
The same marketing instincts that drove the new product launches are now pointed at a larger target: e‑commerce, which accounts for just 4% of sales despite brick‑and‑mortar making up 70%.
“Our stores are great, and we have the capacity to produce more and do more marketing and advertising to sell more online,” Martha says. “That’s a really big opportunity.”
Martha says working in the fourth‑generation business, which today employs about 140 people, has changed her leadership philosophy.
“I don’t really think of the company in terms of ownership or leadership so much as stewardship,” she says. “We have such a long legacy … there’s a responsibility to uphold that and steward it into the next generation.”
photograph by Shane Van Boxtel, Image Studios
By the box
When Joe and Jim Seroogy began making full‑size chocolate bars for local fundraisers in the early 1990s, they were responding to customers who wanted a homegrown alternative to the national companies dominating the fundraiser market.
They launched the program with Seroogy’s Chocolate Meltaway in 1990, and by 1995 had added peanut butter crisp, chocolate crisp and mint flavors.
“It just kept growing, growing, growing without a whole lot of marketing,” Martha says. “It went from about 10,000 bars in 1990 to 3 million today.”
That growth — driven almost entirely by word of mouth and the iconic cardboard sales box that’s become a fixture in fundraisers for schools, churches, sports teams and civic organizations — now accounts for just over 20% of Seroogy’s total business. Bars sell for $2 each, with organizations keeping $1 per bar sold. The program currently offers seven flavors.
“A lot of people see that cardboard box and they get nostalgic,” Martha says.
