Unchained in America

In Parts 1 and 2, we saw how the marketers behind Frito-Lay’s “Lay’s Local” ad campaign are trying to persuade us that Lay’s® Potato Chips are part of the local food movement because the potatoes are gown by “local” farmers and are made into potato chips local processing plants. We also saw how the Lay’s marketers cleverly don’t define what they mean by “local” so that we consumers will read our own definitions into the term.

In Part 3, we saw that while Lay’s Potato Chips are manufactured locally, you really can’t consider their potato chips as part of the local food movement for several reasons. First, Frito-Lay is the $12 billion snack food unit of PepsiCo, which is an international company whose corporate headquarters are in Plano, Texas. Second, Frito-Lay owns the local processing plants that turn the so-called local farmers’ potatos into Lay’s Potato Chips. Third, the money Frito-Lay earns from processing the potatoes into Lay’s Potato Chips doesn’t stay in the plants’ communities, but goes to corporate headquarters in Plano, Texas.

Frito-Lay’s Dirty Little Secret

But in all their talk about Lay’s Potato Chips being part of the local food movement because their chips are made locally, the marketers behind the “Lay’s Local” ad campaign have been keeping a dirty little secret from of us. What’s that secret? Simply this: Almost all potato chips are made locally! That’s right. As far as their being made locally goes, Lay’s Potato Chips are no different from the chips made by just about every other potato chip company.

But don’t take just my word for it. You can check it out for yourself on PotatoPro.com, which published an article in its June 10, 2009 newsletter entitled “Frito-Lay offers local potato chips.” The article states that “ALL potato processors source their potatos locally, with very few exceptions.” And then the article goes on to say that

Most potato processing factories are located right in the middle of potato growing areas. The reason is basic economics: It is expensive to transport potatoes over long distances. Furthermore, transportation is detrimental to the quality of the potatoes, resulting in extra losses during the production process. There is even an extra advantage if potatoes are processed within 24 hours after harvest, since any bruising resulting from harvesting will not develop into black spots.

The article also says that potato chips have to be distributed locally for two reasons. First, the chips are extremely fragile and can break easily when they are transported over long distances. And second, potato chips have a short shelf life. So the sooner you can get the chips to the stores, the better chance they have of being sold before their expiration dates expire.

Frito-Lay’s Reduced Carbon Footprint

The article also recognizes three definitions of “local” for making potato chips:

1. The potatoes are grown by small-scale farmers and processed in small-scale processing plants.
2. The farms grow their potatoes organically in a totally sustainable way.
3. Transporting the potatoes to nearby processing plants reduces the carbon footprint made by the trucks.

The article admits that Frito-Lay doesn’t meet the first two definitions, but says it does meet the third.

But does it really?

I think not because the article doesn’t consider the huge carbon footprint created by the industrial farmers who produced the potatoes that are processed in the nearby Frito-Lay plants. For example, consider the carbon footprint created by Walther Farms on its 14,000-acres of potato farmland in six states and one foreign country. These industrial farmers use tons of patroleum products in farming their 14,000 acres — from fertilizers to pesticides to insecticides. Because their operations are highly mechanized, they rely heavily on gas-powered machines instead of manual labor to sow, reap, and process their potatoes before shipping them to the nearby Frito-Lay processing plants.

The actual carbon footprint of the trucks that transport the potatoes from farm to plant might be small, but the carbon footprint the farmers create before they can bring those potatoes to the trucks is gigantic.

In 2007, Frito-Lay controlled over 60% of the salty snack food market in the United States, and took in over $12 billion in sales. Lay’s Potato Chips accounted for around $2.8 billion of that $12 billion. You can hardly call a company that size “local” or its potato chips local.

Not matter how the Frito-Lay’s marketers try to cut it, Lay’s Potato Chips are definitely not local and Frito-Lay and its potato chip snack food are definitely not part of the local food movement.

Lay’s Potato Chips and Regional Potato Chips

But plenty of locally and regionally made potato chips still exist today (although more and more of them are being goggled up by large companies and losing their local or regional statuses). The companies that make these potato chips actually are part of the local food movement. They are small companies — many family owned. They buy their potatoes from local farmers and turn the potatoes into chips at local plants. and they sell their potato chips locally or regionally. So you know that when you buy their potato chips, your money is really staying in your community — not going to Frito-Lay corporate headquarters in Plano, Texas, or to the corporate headquarters of some other multi-national conglomerate.

Take Rusty’s Potato Chips, for example in California. Rusty and his son make their chips by hand — 10,000 bags a week instead of the 10,000 an hour that Frito-Lay makes. They don’t use a conveyor belt, put the chips in the bag by hand, and also seal each bag by hand. They sell their chips in selected stores in southern California and in Nevada. For the past five years, Rusty’s Island Chips have consistently placed a “strong second” in the annual Who Makes the Best Potato Chip contest.

If you want to try some of Rusty’s Potato Chips, you can buy them online. We did. List night, while Lisa was looking over my draft of this post, she ordered a box. We’re going to do a blind testing and compare Rusty’s chips to Lay’s. We’ll let you know whose chips win.

Another brand is Dakota Style Chips, which are made by a small company in South Dakota that has a total of 12 people working in it. These potato chip makers cook their chips open-kettle style in single batches and then season the chips by hand.

If you want to try some Dakota Style potato chips, you also can order them online.

Currently, the third generation of family owners is making Sterzings Potato Chips. The workers still cook their chips single batch at a time the same way they did in 1933 when the company was founded. Their immediate market of this Iowa-based company is southeast Iowa, but they also ship their chips all over the country and abroad — especially to military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You can order some of their chips online yourself and try.

Those of you on the East Coast can try potato chips made by Deep River Snacks, a small family-owned company in Old Lyme, Connecticut. You can order their chips online, too.

Personally, if I have the chance to buy genuine locally or regionally made chips instead of Lay’s, I’ll jump at it. You should, too. You’ll notice a big difference in both quality and taste. Plus you’ll be supporting your local community — not some distant, faceless, multi-national corporation that’s not really interested in you or your coummunity, but in “the bottom line.”

See also:

• The Truth about Frito-Lay’s “Lay’s Local” Marketing Campaign — Part 1
• The Truth about Frito-Lay’s “Lay’s Local” Marketing Campaign — Part2
• The Truth about Frito-Lay’s “Lay’s Local” Marketing Campaign — Part 3
• “Lay’s Local” Update — They Just Don’t Seem to Get It

Tags: Lay's Local, Lay's Potato Chips, local food movement, potato chips, snack food

This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 11:45 pm and is filed under PR & Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.