Ballreich's a piece of potato chip heaven

By HANNAH MINGUS

RFD News correspondent

TIFFIN — In 1920, Fred Ball­re­ich along with his wife, Ethel, opened up a small potato chip com­pany in the base­ment of their Ohio Avenue home in Tiffin.

When they first began oper­at­ing, pro­duc­ing potato chips was an all day process that only made about 14pounds of chips per day,according to the Ballreich’s web site.

Today, Ballreich’s, still a Tif­fin sta­ple, pro­duces 2,000 pounds of potato chips per hour.

Ballreich’s coined the term “mar­celled potato chips.” Mar­celled was a pop­u­lar flapper-type hair­style worn by women in the 1920s, which meant “wavy,” just like their potato chips.

Every­one loved their chips. The hus­band and wife duo real­ized they needed more help in order to meet this high demand. Fred’s brother Carl joined the com­pany, along with a few other fam­ily mem­bers sev­eral years later, to help cre­ate Ball­re­ich Brother’s Potato Chips.

Carl moved in to the house next door to Fred and Ethel, and the broth­ers even­tu­ally built a small fac­tory behind their homes, where the com­pany is still located at today.

Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion in the 1930s Ballreich’s expe­ri­enced one of its best times, while many com­pa­nies were suffering.

Haley Thomas, the Direc­tor of Sales and Mar­ket­ing, and a fourth gen­er­a­tion Ball­re­ich her­self, said con­sumers dur­ing the Great Depres­sion did not con­sider potato chips to be a lux­ury item, so the com­pany grew and did not struggle.

Nearly 100 years after Fred first started the com­pany, Ballreich’s has grown immensely. Today it is one of a a cou­ple hand­fuls of Ohio potato chip com­pa­nies still in oper­a­tion, along with Mike-sell’s, Jones, Conn’s, Sny­der and Frito Lay, to name a few. Fred assisted Bob Jones in start­ing up his com­pany, Jones Potato Chips.

Ballreich’s does not grow their own pota­toes. They pur­chase Snowed in and Atlantic pota­toes from local farms in Alvada dur­ing Ohio’s potato season.

When the crop is not in sea­son, they begin pur­chas­ing pota­toes from Florida, and even­tu­ally work their way back up north. Thomas said they must use the cer­tain type of potato in order to make white chips.

It is a con­tin­u­ous process to make the chips. The palnt uses 8,000 pounds of pota­toes used per hour to pro­duce 2,000 pounds of potato chips an hour. About three-fourths of the loss is liq­uid– either water, starch or peelings.

Besides potato chips, the com­pany also pro­duces pret­zels, pop­corn, tor­tilla chips, licorice, nuts as well as choco­late cov­ered potato chips through­out the hol­i­day sea­son along with other snack foods. The oper­a­tion employs 50 to 60 work­ers and about a dozen indus­trial operators.

“We’d love to expand some­day,” Thomas said. “We own the back lot so we could expand there.”

Besides dis­trib­ut­ing their famous potato chips nation­ally, Ballreich’s also ships them to sev­eral other coun­tries such as Mex­ico, Costa Rica, and North and South Korea. The only dif­fer­ence is that they slightly alter the taste and pack­ag­ing of the chips to bet­ter appeal to their inter­na­tional customers.

Ballreich’s donates its prod­ucts to local troops who were deployed and are serv­ing in Iraq, along with pro­vid­ing chips to mil­i­tary bases such as the Mil­i­tary Entrance Pro­cess­ing Sta­tion in Ohio for the recruits.

“We try and donate chips when­ever we can,” Thomas said.

Not only does the com­pany help the mil­i­tary, but they also do their part in try­ing to remain as “green” as they can. Ballreich’s prac­tices as much recy­cling as pos­si­ble by reusing cases 10–12 times. The com­pany also don­aed potato waste to local hog and dairy farms to be used as feed.

“It’s con­sid­ered green now, but we’ve always been that way,” Thomas said. “We have been doing it for many years.”

Ballreich’s received the 2010 SBA Family-Owned Busi­ness of the Year (Cleve­land Dis­trict) Award.

“It was the biggest and most excit­ing award we’ve received,” Thomas said.

The com­pany no longer gives tours of the fac­tory, but they do have a Fun Day when the pub­lic is invited to visit the fac­tory and watch a tour of the man­u­fac­tur­ing process on a big screen, and then receive a com­pli­men­tary bag of fresh chips at the end.

“Locals enjoy being able to walk down the street and smell potato chips,” Thomas said.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Sep 17 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.