Moon Brand Original Saratoga Potato Chips may have just been introduced by Saratoga Specialties Company on July 4, but they’re already spreading across the country and attracting some national media attention. The local snack was featured as the Snack of the Day on Rachael Ray’s Emmy award-winning nationally syndicated daytime talk show on Monday, Dec. 7.
`We’re joining the ranks of perhaps 100 products that she looks at every year and shows to her audience. Out of everything she could show, she chose us,` said Danny Jameson, president of Saratoga Specialties Company. `At the end of the interview, she had a production assistant run out a box [of our chips] and told the story of her dad living in Saratoga Springs and what a pretty town it is. What’s interesting is that she said she loved our packaging and loved the chips and that her sister had actually brought her down a box. We were blown away by that because we thought we were going to be the ones introducing them to her and had been working our tails off to see if she was interested for her show, and it turns out she fell in love with us and wanted to have us on the show.`
The episode aired in New York City at 10 a.m. and continued throughout the day around the nation. Jameson said that since yesterday morning, the company has received about 238 calls of inquiry. He said he usually only gets 10 to 20 such calls a day. Resellers, or companies that are interested in carrying the potato chips at their retail locations, usually pop up about once a day. So far, 11 resellers have expressed an interest in selling the chips. Where there’s usually about three to five online orders a day, Jameson said he just processed order number 39 and that the Web site has had around 1,000 to 1,500 unique hits since airtime.
`We expected it to hit hard and taper off, but it’s still going, which is kind of cool. The show is no longer on air but somehow people are still getting to us,` said Jameson. `This was absolutely unbelievable; what a great opportunity. She’s [Rachael Ray] kind of the end all be all, at least for her fans.`
Jameson went to the show’s taping back in October as a representative of the product. While he didn’t get to actually meet Rachael Ray, he said his company had to send 150 samples to the show and that after a breakdown, it turned out that some were for the studio audience, others were for the production crew and several were requested as personal samples for Ray herself.
A representative from the Rachael Ray Show said that product testers loved the taste of the chips and thought the box was `really pretty.` As long as a product can be sold online and linked to the show’s Web site, anybody can try their luck at becoming the `Snack of the Day.`
Jameson said that potato chips were originally a dine-in item back in the 1800’s but became so popular that the Moon Lakehouse, where they were created, made a special takeout box for customers. He said he worked with Saratoga Springs History Museum to recreate the exact box and recipe originally used. Since launching in July, Jameson said the company’s focus has been to establish a solid customer base locally, while raising awareness about the product nationally.
`We had to prove not only to ourselves, but prove to the model that we could make a product, present it and sell it locally first. Once we found out how popular it was, we started getting feedback from people. We launched at the height of tourist season, so what we actually did was kind of viral. We ended up getting on the market in Saratoga Springs but also got national exposure because so many people from all over the world come here for racing season,` said Jameson.
Whether or not tourists taking boxes of potato chips back to their hometowns is what put them on the map,the chips are sold at 250 retail outlets nationwide.
`They’re selling like crazy in Kansas, California, Seattle; that’s what really is so cool. You’d expect to do well here but it’s so exciting to see in Washington DC and Texas how fast they’re selling,` said Jameson. `You have to overcome that homegrown image and really tell the story; while this is a product that is germane to Saratoga Springs, it certainly has a broader appeal.`
And the reason for this broader appeal is not just because the chips are a `feel good classic.` Jameson wants the world to know the true story of the potato chip.
`We also want to educate the consumer to know that potato chips weren’t invented in Cape Cod, but in Saratoga Springs. Hopefully this will, in turn, drive business back into the community, which has been so supportive of us through the whole process,` said Jameson.
The factory is based in Saratoga Springs where all the warehousing, production, packaging and FDA stamping and sealing occurs. The company doesn’t have a `brick and mortar sales outlet` yet but it does hope to offer tours of the facility in the near future.
Moon Brand Original Saratoga Chips have also received some love from national print media like The New York Times and the food e-zine The Nibble, which named them a `stocking stuffer` for 2009.
A full list of where to buy the chips locally is on the Web site, www.originalsaratogachips.com.
For more on this story, pick up the Thursday, Dec. 10 print version of the Saratoga Spotlight.
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