Carol Fisher Linn
Name your favorite snack
Americans place potato chips number two, slightly behind cookies
Name your favorite kind of chip. Regular? BBQ? Salt and Vinegar? Buffalo wing? Here, stop reading for a moment and ask the people around you how many flavors they have tasted. Dill pickle?? Sour cream and onion? Then fantasize about what flavors you would like! I’ll prime the imagination pump with a few that can be found around the world: Baked scallop with butter and garlic – Thailand; Whiskey & haggis- Scotland; Red caviar – Russia; Hot and sour fish soup – China; Mushroom – Czech Republic; Roast ox – England and Kebab and onion – Poland. Mmm…
Potato chips did not have flavors until the 1950’s when a company by the name of Tayto invented a way to successfully flavor chips starting with cheese & onion, and salt & vinegar. This revolutionized the potato chip industry!
According to a June 2021 global survey on snacks by Statista, 59% percent out of 100 prefer cookies and 58% out of 100 prefer chips and crisps. Cookies have an edge since they’ve been around since the 7th century AD in Persia, when bakers dropped small amounts of cake batter on slabs or pans to test the baking temperature before they made their cakes. Potato chips were an accident, much like our beloved chicken wings were. According to Enchanted Learning, potato chips were invented in 1853 by George Crum, an African American chef at Saratoga’s Moon Lake Lodge Resort in New York. Up until that time, French fries were served as an alternative to mashed or baked potatoes, etc., but they sometimes arrived too thick and/or mushy. Such was the case one day when Chef Crum had an order of fries returned with complaints of the mushy thickness. This was the magic moment when Crum decided to slice the potatoes thinner and deep fry them to crispiness. The experiment was a rousing success. The customer loved them, and the potato chip was born. Of course, there are others who claim this distinction, but these Saratoga Chips seem to have hung on to the designation of the home of the potato chip. Soon, they were packaged and sold all over New England. Lays came on the scene in the 1920’s when Herman Lay sold chips out of the trunk of his car but leave it to a woman, Laura Scudder of Monterey Park, California to find a better way to package her chips. She sent her employees home at night with pieces of waxed paper that they folded and ironed into an envelope shape, allowing her chips to stay fresher longer.
In 2021, Frito Lay led the pack of potato chip vendors with sales of over 5 billion dollars, with Utz bringing up the ranks of the top five with sales of over 299 million dollars. Of course, there are many smaller producers such as New York Chips which was featured on the local nightly news earlier this week. These chips are produced by Marquart Farms located forty-five minutes from Ellicottville in Gainesville, near Letchworth State Park. Back in its founding days, Marquart Farms was all dairy. When brothers Ed and Tom took over in the sixties, they planted potatoes. About 7 years ago, they attended an agricultural event called “Agripalooza” taking with them some of their potato chip snacks with the idea of promoting NYS agriculture. A gentleman from Wegmans tasted the chips and became their first customer in 2016. The family plants about 7000 acres of potatoes in Steuben, Livingston, Erie, Genesee Counties and surrounding counties. Most of the 60 million pounds of potatoes they raise are chipping potatoes. 40-80 thousand pounds are sent daily to Syracuse, where they are cleaned, sorted, cut, fried, and bagged, then returned to Gainesville for distribution to stores like Wegman’s Tops, Save-A-Lot, Wal-Mart and others. Chad Heeb, Vice President of Operations for New York Chips explained how the quality and amount of potatoes grown across the United States is changing. Marquarts grow their own so they can be competitive with some of the major players on the potato chip scene. Looking for ways to stand out among the competition they approached local establishments who had a signature flavor and created chips like Anchor Bar Spicy Buffalo Wing, Spiedies Chicken Marinade, Craig’s Creamery Cheddar and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que chips. Try them. You’re gonna love them.