Who Makes The THINNEST Potato Chips On The Market? (cookie, meal, French)
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Lays regular/original potato chips are so thin as to be fragile, far too salty, and leave an unpleasant engineered-grease film in the mouth. No discernable plant source such as peanut oil or coconut oil, just a slightly sludgelike old-used-oil kind of feel and taste. YUCK.
A fairly thin, crackly-crunchy potato chip with good flavor is Cape Cod’s Reduced Fat chips. The regular ones are good, too, but the reduced fat have a lighter feel.
Now watch, Lays or some other mainstream big company will buy a majority share of the small, higher-quality chip companies and start downgrading them, swapping in junk under the guise of the old company name. Like when Coca Cola bought Honest Tea. A popularm excellent former product quietly became unavailable, and now the lineup consists of caffeinated, sugary teas, just more of the same flavored sugar water every other big company sells.
They're my favorites in SoCal. When we're back in North Idaho I always buy Tim's Cascade Chips, regular flavor, unsalted. They're thick, but not greasy. Great flavor, and then you can salt them to your own specifications.
Before I went low-salt, I used to buy Stacks Regular Flavor chips. You can go through half a tube of those in no time...
Up until the conclusion of World War II, the company served a small, but loyal customer base in East-Central Pennsylvania; one morning in the winter of 1943-44, a storm curtain reportedly blew into the gas ring of a fryer, and the plant burned o the ground. This was wartime, and the supply of construction materials was strictly controlled by the War Production Board. Yet by the time hostilities ceased, the plant was rebuilt at about five times the capacity, and two new distributorships with anonymous-sounding names were ready to go in Metro New Yok and Northern New Jersey. Senior employees the Berwick plant set up distributorships in New England and Philadelphia.
Founder Earl V. Wise died in 1963 and the company was sold outright to Borden dairies; it was also around this time that concerns over distant corporate management led to the plant's unionization (Amalgamated Food Employees) and the scuttling of a popular profit-sharing plan. But throughout its history, the company has endured only one strike -- of about six weeks duration in the winter of 1973-74.
The Sixties were the most successful years for Wise Foods, with the introduction of flavored 9barbecue, sour cream and onion/garlic chips, plus popcorn and several tapioca-based snack items (Onion Rings and Pizza Wheels) Borden had also acquired Bronx-based Old London (Dipsy Doodles corn chips and Cheez Doodles cheese snacks). Borden had also acquired several regional snack producers: Buckeye, Golden Flake, Guys and Laura Scudder, and was planning to go head-to-head with Frito-Lay on a nationwide basis.
Unfortunately, Borden over-extended itself in the early 1990's; the company was dismantled and many components, Wise among them, were sold off piecemeal.
Thanks for quoting Wise’s history here. Their potato chips were my far-and-ahead favorite as a kid growing up in the Boston area. I was crazy about the popcorn, too. We had a local company, Cain’s (out of Medford, I think) whose potato chips were my second favorite brand. Never seen these outside of eastern MA.
After I moved to CO, I was disappointed to not find any Wise products whatsoever. Then, maybe 10 yrs ago, an Asia grocery store on Denver’s Asian strip (Federal Blvd near Alameda) displayed a few bags of Wise potato chips. I bought one and eagerly tore it open. Bleah. NOT the same chips I ate as a kid! The Borden rendition had had supremely fresh potato flavor and the peanut oil used matched the chips perfectly. These new chips were totally forgettable in flavor and texture.
I’m not taking chances trying another New England classic that got sold out, either. RIP, Peggy Lawton cookies!
At the Wise plant, Borden tried to copy Pringles with what were called "fabricated chips", to be marketed as "Stackables"; they had the distinctive yellow color for which Wise chips were, and still are noted, but tasted somewhat more bland; they were marketed in "fiber cans". The company gradually lost interest and the machinery sat unused in one corner of the plant for some time.
Not long after, Wise tried thicker-cut chips, marketed as "Cottage Fries", and very brittle kettle-cooked chips, sold as "New York Deli" chips and, for a short time, "City Spuds". Borden would come up with a slightly different concept, and Frito-Lay (now part of PepsiCo) would copy it -- or vice-versa. Innovation (which really wasn't all that innovative) was the name of the game.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 05-15-2019 at 10:06 PM..
They're my favorites in SoCal. When we're back in North Idaho I always buy Tim's Cascade Chips, regular flavor, unsalted. They're thick, but not greasy. Great flavor, and then you can salt them to your own specifications.
Before I went low-salt, I used to buy Stacks Regular Flavor chips. You can go through half a tube of those in no time...
Tim’s Cascade chips are super crunchy and tasty. But they definitely aren’t thin and light. I used to buy them often when we lived in WA. Back in CO now, they are rarer. But literally the last time I went to Safeway—I mean just before your post—I finally saw them in there! Yep, I bought a bag.
Wise potato chips. So thin you could probably read through them. Very crisp, too.
When I was kid, these were my father's go-to-chip. I never particularly liked them as they had way too many "burned" chips.
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. Borden would come up with a slightly different concept, and Frito-Lay (now part of PepsiCo) would copy it -- or vice-versa. Innovation (which really wasn't all that innovative) was the name of the game.
