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With sales increasing by 12 percent a year, Zapp's Potato Chips celebrated its 15th birthday in July by expanding its facilities and preparing to introduce a new flavor of its popular chips.
The Gramercy operation has just completed a $650,000 expansion at its site that included the addition of a 10,000-square-foot warehouse, a packaging machine and a new filtration system, designed by company owner and founder Ron Zappe, that will allow the peanut oil in the chip fryers to be recycled. The company also has added a small warehouse in New Orleans.
The expansion is proof that the company has come a long way since it was started in 1985.
"When we first started, we were making a handful of chips a day," Zappe said. "Now, we're making 100,000 bags a day."
The operation was so small when it opened in the old Faucheaux Chevrolet Dealership that the company phone was on a party line with other Gramercy residents. Zappe said he sometimes had to wait for the other party line participants to finish swapping recipes before he could do his business.
The business now has 100 employees at the Gramercy plant and distributors at other locations around the state.
It was distribution, Zappe added, that was a little difficult in the early days.
"We were in Duesseldorf, Germany, before we were in the stores in Baton Rouge," Zappe said. "We still ship a container of chips to Duesseldorf on a regular basis, where they are sold at Exxon stations there."
It all started with Zapp's Regular Chips, but now the product line also includes Cajun Crawtator (the top seller), Jalapeno, Mesquite...