Welcome to the official Web site of Carrie Valley Chips! For over a century, we’ve been family-owned, making our world-renowned potato chips with passion and integrity you can taste in every bite. Here’s our story.
1909: After accidentally buying too many potatoes, Frank “Daddy” Carrie sliced them up, fried them, and fell in love. Carrie Valley Chips was born.
1920s: The gospel of chip spread fast. If you consult the history books, flappers were constantly eating Carrie Valley Chips in between drinking, dancing, and crashing the Model T.
1946: Business was booming, and, to celebrate, our family hosted the neighborhood’s first block party. There, Daddy made the acquaintance of a dowdy-looking woman, which was likely the greatest thing that had ever happened in her sad life.
1953: We introduced two new flavors: pepper and cheddar. Turns out that the dowdy-looking woman was an immortal witch in the business of “starting shit,” and apparently had met Daddy a few times already (at the post office, after he snatched the last shipping envelope; at the grocery store, after he shoved her during the infamous Butter Sale of 1951; the hit-and-run; etc.). Annoyed about having been forgotten, she cursed our family to be forever unsuccessful, and doomed to never, ever get into a place called Soho House. Luckily, with the permission of the city commissioner, we were able to drown her in the lake.
1965: We ran our first-ever national magazine ad, though the magazine misspelled the brand name as “Cattie Varlly Chaps.” Disappointing, but surely a fledgling publication like the New York Times Magazine needed time to get on its feet. We had a passing thought of the witch’s—no, no, it couldn’t be. Right?
1968: After a long, fruitful life, Daddy passed away. We sent the newspaper an obituary that highlighted Carrie Valley, and also Daddy’s famed horse-betting/horse-grooming/horse-taunting career. But the obit never ran, and the editor said that he never even received it. Perhaps the witch’s curse was real after all.
1970: We figured we could beat the witch’s curse if we made ourselves truly unforgettable, so we débuted a honey-mustard chip. Somehow, it was snubbed at the National Snack Awards. Every voter we held at gunpoint swore that they’d vote for honey mustard, but when we checked the ballot box, it had fully combusted—the curse had stooped to election fraud. How else could “cheese puff” win?
1976: After focus-grouping a string of avant-garde chip shapes (tall, thick, rectangle), we returned to our Carrie Valley classic (round). Carrie Valley also received an offer from a potential buyer, interested in taking over the business. The buyer was a faceless, cloaked figure, but it was a ton of money. After some legal back-and-forth, we learned that the buyer was the witch, returning to tempt us into selling so that she could run Carrie Valley into the ground and ruin our legacy. It was a little harder having her drowned in the lake this time because feminism was really taking off, but after greasing a few palms, we were able to sink her once again.
1984: Buttermilk-ranch chips joined the family this year, and the witch emerged from the lake. That hag always finds a way.
1985: We added tortilla chips! Also, the witch came to us with a proposal: she would let up on the curse if, in exchange, we allowed her to turn second cousin Trevor into a goat. This complicated things because Trevor didn’t want to be a goat, but, on the other hand, we read a piece in the New York Times Magazine about how becoming a goat can increase empathy in young men. Anyway, Trevor’s parents nixed the idea.
1993: Carrie Valley sued Paramount Pictures over a scene in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s character was supposed to be snacking on Carrie Valley Chips, but the curse C.G.I.’d in cheese puffs, in post.
2000: We partnered with Major League Baseball to become their official snack. But when the Yankees won the World Series, the jumbotron kept crapping out every time our name was meant to appear. Y2K’s wrath spared no one.
2012: We caved to the bacon-flavor craze and joined a new app called Instagram to establish a social-media presence, which is how we learned that the witch and cousin Trevor had become an item. The curse also led to our account getting hacked and posting about discounted Ray-Bans, resulting in millions of unfollows.
2016: This was a hard year, and not just because Trevor and the witch forgot to send us a save-the-date for their wedding. Whatever. It’s not like we wanted to be invited anyway. We were busy débuting our pineapple-hot-sauce chips, an innovation that earned us both a spot in Workplace Health Violation magazine’s annual Yuck! Awards and on the F.D.A.’s watch list.
2018: We reduced our carbon footprint by ten per cent and then cancelled that out by flying private to crash Trevor and the witch’s wedding (at Soho House, of all places). The witch didn’t recognize us and introduced herself like we were strangers. Suddenly, the cake, the caterers, the band—everything and everyone involved with the wedding—turned into bags of Carrie Valley Chips. Guests screamed, the witch passed out, and the curse, it seemed, was finally broken. Which gave us the idea for our new wedding-cake chip!
Today and the future: We currently produce ten million pounds of chips weekly, and make sure to be mean to the witch’s face whenever we see her. Check out our new ghost-pepper chip that’s better than the one made by our new mortal enemy, Trader Joe’s!
