Snack Food 2008

Outstanding Snack Food 2008: Route 11 Potato Chips Sweet Potato Chips

Sarah Cohen, owner of Middletown, Va.’s Route 11 Potato Chips, knows the potential of good chips. “Chips have been considered a low brow food and have traditionally been eaten directly out of the bag. But, a good chip can rise and impress on any occasion,” she says.

Route 11’s Sweet Potato Chips do just that.

Since its start in 1992, the company has been making Sweet Potato Chips, which are now batch cooked in a blend of peanut and high-oleic sunflower oil, and lightly salted or seasoned. Having mastered the mysteries of cooking sweet potatoes because of their ability to caramelize and burn, the company now uses many kinds of sweets, including organic varieties from a grower on the Eastern shore of Virginia. “If we’re lucky and the season is good, we also cook Haymans, an heirloom variety from the Eastern shore,” Cohen adds.  

Although they are always a strong seller, the company has noticed a recent surge in the Sweet Potato Chips’ popularity. “[They] are extremely nutritious: A 1-ounce serving has 120 percent of the RDA of vitamin A,” she adds. “That kind of nutritional content is generally unheard of in snack foods.”

Sweet Potato Chips can be merchandised in the deli or in the conventional snack aisle. They are also versatile: “We’ve had chefs do wine pairings with our chips, create delicacies like crème fraîche and caviar Napoleons with them or make potato chip frittatas,” Cohen explains. “There are chocolatiers who enrobe them in chocolate and even sports bar foodies who use them as ‘breading’ for their buffalo wings.” Suggested retail: $1.49/1.5-ounce bag.   Contact: Sarah Cohen, Route 11 Potato Chips, 540.869.0104; sarah@rt11.com; rt11.com.—Nicole Potenza Denis

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