Southern California newspaper readers get a taste -- figuratively -- of a made-in-Detroit delicacy with a cult following nationwide.
"The loyalty of the Detroit diaspora to one potato chip brand may seem surprising to outsiders, but it makes perfect sense to Sam Cipriano, whose father founded Better Made" in 1930, Alana Semuels writes in the Los Angeles Times.
Cipriano said people can taste Michigan in the chips: the Michigan-grown potatoes the company uses 10 months out of the year, the Detroit water, the Michigan-made salt."We're just a regional company, but everybody that grew up in Detroit grew up with us," he said.
In fact, the company is doing better than ever, Cipriano said, even though the only stores carrying the brand are in Michigan. Better Made frequently hears of people buying up whole shelves of the chips and shipping them to family members. The company also started offering Web sales a decade or so ago."When we started in the Internet, we were trying to help people in Michigan send chips to Arizona, Florida, California," Cipriano said. "But then people in Florida were ordering them to send to other people in Florida, so we could tell there was demand."
Semuels, whose 25-paragraph article in the print edition's main news section spans six columns and has two photos, puts potato chips alongside two other Detroit icons:
Detroit might be known for its cars and as the home of Motown. But its third claim to fame? Potato chip consumption capital of the country.
Detroiters consume an average of seven pounds of chips a year; the rest of the country eats four pounds.
The reporter quotes 61-year-old GM retiree Jim Mattson who "goes online to order the chips in bulk" from his RV park in Arizona:
"I can't put them down..They don't taste greasy; it's just a thick potato chip that tastes like a potato."
-- Alan Stamm
