When was kettle chips founded

So many milestones to look back on… The first Compact Disc player was sold in Japan. Doctors successfully implanted the first permanent artificial heart. And, perhaps most important of all for us munchie lovers , a group of friends somewhere along the coastline of Oregon changed the way people have enjoyed potato chips ever since. Curious to hear more about how the deliciously crunchy snack accoutrement made its way from a van in a small Northwest town to a go-to snacking staple across the country?

Read on! Healy was born in Bend; his father was Bill Healy, the founder of Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort. Cameron Healy attended the University of Oregon, and while in Eugene, he joined a communal group of Sikhs who founded the Golden Temple Bakery, which produced whole-grain breads and granola. Healy, whose Sikh name was Nirbhao Singh Khalsa, graduated from the university in and moved to Salem, where he founded the Golden Temple Foods distribution company. In , he established the N. Khalsa Company to manufacture his own products, principally roasted nuts and nut butter.

Healy initially sold his snacks out of a van along the Interstate 5 corridor in Oregon. Healy opened a 25,square-foot plant in July in downtown Salem, where the company established a process that was a return to early twentieth-century methods: cooking individual batches of thin-sliced potatoes in vats of hot oil. In , he changed his company's name to Kettle Foods.

The company also uses Russet Burbank potatoes, which it buys from Pacific Northwest farmers, and does not use monosodium glutamate or artificial colors, flavors, or sweeteners. Kettle Foods opened factories in Vancouver, B. As part of its founding principles, the company and its founder have contributed to environmental and social causes. Two years later, the company helped preserve Hedges Creek Marsh in Tualatin. As of they were the largest natural potato chip brand in the U.

The company, founded in by Cameron Healy, was previously sold to Lion Capital in and was owned by Diamond Foods from to The company was founded by Cameron Healy in as the N. Khalsa Company ; it produced its first potato chips in In , following a motorcycle trip taken by the company's founder and his son, Kettle Foods established a UK branch in a converted shoe factory in Norwich, England; the branch moved five years later to its current UK home, a newly built factory on the outskirts of Norwich, England in Norfolk, England.

In , the company installed the largest solar array in the Pacific Northwest with the goal of using more green energy at their Salem plant. In October , campaigns were launched on Facebook calling for a boycott of Kettle Foods products following allegations that the company was attempting to dissuade workers at its Norwich factory from joining trade union Unite.