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What's Happening MoCo?
An authentic, unscripted update from County Cable Montgomery highlighting items that help residents of Montgomery County. This program features interviews with elected officials, employees, public servants, and residents. It is produced by the Office of Community Engagement from the Department of Technology and Enterprise Business Services. Interviews are recorded live and presented with very few edits to ensure the integrity and authenticity of the conversations.
What's Happening MoCo?
What's Happening with My Dad's Chips - Happy Father's Day
In this episode of the What's Happening MoCo Podcst, we talk to father and son Potato Chip business duo Gary and Brian Edell. When Gary Edell started making homemade potato chips for his son Brian's baseball team gatherings in 2009, he never imagined those crispy, thin-sliced snacks would eventually become a thriving business competing against industry giants.
From an operation that once produced 20 pounds of potatoes in two hours in Gary's kitchen, they now process 2,000 pounds per hour and can be found in over 950 stores including Giant, Wegmans, and Fresh Market.
Gary's advice to fathers everywhere: support your children's passions, even when they differ from your own.
Good day and welcome to what's Happening MoCo, an authentic unscripted podcast from your Montgomery County government. Now here's your host, derek Kenney.
Speaker 2:Good day and welcome to what's Happening MoCo. In today's episode we talk to a father and son duo that have made a savory business from a delicious gesture. Join me in welcoming Gary and Brian Edel of my Dad's Chips to the podcast. Just a few weeks ago we were talking about an event where a great many local and some regional entrepreneurs in the food industry and hospitality industry were coming together and during that we were able to sample different types of food. I was able to enjoy these very crisp and flavorful and savory chips called my Dad's Chips. Fast forward a few weeks, a few weeks later, I'm at a golf tournament and there's a table full of chips that were there. And again, they're my Dad's Chips and I knew which flavor I liked because I tried them before and I love the French onion Very tasty, very tasty. And now I find out that Gary Edel is not only a great chip maker, he's also a Montgomery County resident long-term and a Montgomery County business owner here in Montgomery County, maryland. Welcome to the podcast, gary and Brian.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us. Thank you very much for having us. We're very happy to be here.
Speaker 2:I'm glad that you guys are here today, because I love to talk about good news. We don't always have a chance to talk about good news, but today is great news because when people are hearing this, it's either very close to Father's Day or Father's Day just passed, and we have a chance to honor all the great sacrifices in ways that fathers show their love for their families, and you in particular and I don't want to spoil the story, because we're going to talk about the journey from where you started to becoming MoCo's own chip. What do you call it? Chip barons, chip makers there you go, there you go, so let's talk about it. This is your son, brian, all right, and Gary, so tell us a little bit about yourself, gary. Where did you start in business and before you got into potato chips?
Speaker 3:So my background is commercial real estate, which is a natural transition into the potato chip industry.
Speaker 2:Of course, of course.
Speaker 3:I've been in commercial real estate for about 35 years. I've been mostly on the transactional side. I did work for a developer for about 15 years and I've had my own commercial real estate brokerage company since 2011. Oh wow.
Speaker 2:All right, and here's your son, brian. And here's your son, brian. And Brian, how is it that you helped to inspire your father from his traditional business or his longtime career to starting your own business in potato chips, of all things?
Speaker 4:Yeah, my dad, my whole life has been a great chef, always making fantastic meals for my family, and he started making these chips back in 2009. And pretty much everywhere we took them, people would say man chips, you got to sell these things when I went to college. I went to school in Missouri my dad would send me big care packages, huge Tupperwares of potato chips and people would say, where'd you get them? I'd say, oh, they're my dad's chips and I studied economics, finance and statistics and said to my dad hey, we have a really good product here. Let's figure out how much we don't know about the potato chip business and see if we can turn this, this product, into a commercially viable company. Turns out it's a lot.
Speaker 2:But what you didn't know then is that you could be successful. Um, I'm not sure how, how long ago was that that was about 2018, 2019.
Speaker 4:When we when we first had the idea of let's let's see what we can do uh, the I guess if, if there was one aha moment, it would have been uh, I played, I played baseball in college. Okay, my coach was a bit of a a tough, tough love type of coach. We had had a series in louisville, kentucky, and my dad had brought chips to the series for me to take on the bus back home.
Speaker 4:We had just gotten our butts whooped by Bellarmine University and I was going after a suitable amount of time to be sad on the bus, I started going up and down and giving chips out to people and I got to my coach and I said hey, coach, do you want to try some chips? And he said, no, I don't, I don't want any chips. Go back to your seat. And I said, coach, come on, they're my dad's chips.
Speaker 3:They're really good, I guarantee you he didn't say it quite like that, not quite like that. There might have been a few choice words in there and four letters four letters.
Speaker 4:And so he, he begrudgingly, eventually takes a handful of chips and I I go back to my seat and about 10-15 minutes later he walks back and goes hey, you got any more of those chips? And that was kind of the moment where I said we really, if I can make him happy with these chips, we can make anybody happy with these chips, we can make anybody happy with these chips, and what was the first conversation like?
Speaker 2:when you got home and or when you were ready to have a serious conversation with your father about going into business? What was when? What was that like and what spurred what inspired that exact moment?
Speaker 3:We started that conversation when Brian was still in school. He was like cause.
Speaker 3:You know Brian was taking business classes and learning all about business and you know Brian was one of the first people to really say dad, these chips are just different than any other potato chips. And then, when he got out of college and was working in healthcare finance and starting to really understand the business world a little bit better, brian would still says a lot Our, our chips have a lot of differentiable qualities. It's taken me about three years to be able to say that properly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but they do because they're thin sliced and they're kettle cooked and they're made from a russet potato. The russet potato gives it a lot more real potato flavor and that golden brown color, whereas most potato chips are more of a pale yellow and really don't have a lot of flavor because they use just a plain white potato and end up being a vehicle for salt and other seasonings. Our chips have their own natural, inherent flavor from the russet potato and then when we thin slice and kettle cook it, it gives it a really unique potato chip.
Speaker 2:And so the first time, what was it like the first time you decided I'm going to make potato chips? I'm not sure many people in their kitchens feeding their families would have thought I will make my own potato chips. What was that first thought like, and what was the process like to get to the point where you have your style of potato chip?
Speaker 3:So the chip sort of came to be because, as Brian said, he played a lot of baseball. I helped coach when Brian was younger and one of the other dads who coached with me made milkshakes and the kids loved his milkshakes. Everybody used to come back to our house. The other dad would make milkshakes. He's like, hey, you got to make something for the kids to have with the milkshakes, but I started making potato chips and.
Speaker 3:I started slicing them by hand and started playing around with different oil combinations, and the more I kind of played around with it, the more people were like, wow, these are really good potato chips. A friend of ours bought me a mandolin slicer and I was able to start slicing after almost losing a couple of fingers.
Speaker 2:Now, what's a mandolin slicer?
Speaker 3:So a mandolin slicer is basically like a blade and you can adjust it. You can adjust the height of it and you can slice things super thin, oh, wow. So I was able to start playing around with the thickness of the chip a lot more effectively than I could by hand cutting and I was able to get them super thin. And I made them so thin one time that they actually just evaporated. So I knew that that was too thin, but I found the right thickness or thinness, whatever you want to call it, and that was sort of became the potato chip at that point in time and people really started saying like wow, these are really thin, crispy, delicious potato chips. At the time I didn't really understand the effect of the russet potato so much, but as I started you know when we decided to make it a business I started learning more about the different types of potatoes and really got a better understanding of why the Russet potato for us was making a better potato chip.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that's incredible. And not that you necessarily need a formal title when your son and you are the leaders of the company. So what do they call you? Dad in chief and son 00?
Speaker 3:Or what are your official titles? Chip off the old block. Chip off the old block. Yeah, how about that? And I'm just the dad.
Speaker 2:Just the dad, hey, but it's my dad's chips, my dad's chips, right?
Speaker 3:That's the reason why we're here. Somebody's got to be the dad.
Speaker 2:There you go. There you go Now, here at this point now, and let's talk about the gravity of where we are in terms of my Dad's Chips, and I think we remarked a while ago about the branding on these chips. It's very well done. If I saw them in the store next to Lay's and Utz, I would think that these are three major competitors that have been around for eons. While they are three major competitors because you guys are competing with those guys, but you haven't been around for eons. While they are three major competitors because you guys are competing with those guys, but you haven't been around for eons. What got you from let's Start a Business to my Dad's Chips? And then were there other names for the chips before my Dad's Chips?
Speaker 3:Well, believe it or not, they've only been my Dad's Chips.
Speaker 2:That was the name.
Speaker 3:like Brian said when he was in college and my daughter was in college and people would ask them where the chips came from, the answer was always they're my Dad's.
Speaker 2:Chips.
Speaker 3:And that's just kind of what we referred to them as, and when we decided to go into business it was there was no other.
Speaker 4:I don't think we had any other discussion on no, we went back and forth on it a little bit and we had the discussion of well, what have we always called them? And we don't call them the, the crispy chips or the crunchy chips. We just I just called them my dad's chips and that felt not only was it accurate, but it you can really build a brand around that name.
Speaker 4:It's something that people can relate to, whether their dad has made chips or not. Everybody's a lot of people's families have longstanding recipes or things that their family does that reminds them of that feeling, and that's really what we're trying to tap into with the brand.
Speaker 3:And the name really embodies the story. It's as Brian says. It's easy to build a brand off. It's also the story is very relatable to people because a lot of people you know, like Brian said, there's recipes. A lot of people say, oh, my aunt used to make potato chips at home, or my grandmother made potato chips at home. So, my dad's chips really resonates with people and gets that in and of itself gets them interested in trying the chips.
Speaker 2:Right people and gets that in and of itself gets them interested in trying the chips Right, and so we. So you started years ago and there's been times you got a big tub of chips somewhere tubs of chips for your son's baseball team. So what type of volume are you doing now? So back then you had a tub where I could feed 20 hungry baseball players. What type of volume are you doing now?
Speaker 3:so back then it would take, we would. I would cook about 20 pounds of potatoes in roughly two hours. Oh wow, now we're cooking about 2 000 pounds of potatoes in an hour, in an hour, in an hour okay, and how many hours are you producing?
Speaker 2:uh?
Speaker 3:we're cooking chips usually for about 10 hours oh wow.
Speaker 2:So so you're you're. You have serious volume like you. Yes, there's a serious supply chain of my Dad's Chips.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're cooking. Generally, each production run, we're cooking about 45,000 pounds of potatoes at a time. All right Takes about two to three days.
Speaker 2:And where are you guys located now? So if someone wanted to pick up a bag of chips in Montgomery County, or if they're traveling, where would they be able to buy a bag of my dad's chips, Brian?
Speaker 4:So we just launched with Giant on a limited scale. We're in about 50 Giant stores across Montgomery County and Northern Virginia.
Speaker 2:Round of applause for Giant. Yeah, good job, giant. Good choices, all right.
Speaker 4:We sell in all the food lines in Maryland. We are in, I believe, all of the Wegmans locations in Maryland and hopefully soon to be the new Rockville location that's opening up in a couple of months.
Speaker 2:Remember Paul's Wegmans Good choices, all right.
Speaker 4:And several independent mom and pop delis and grocery stores throughout the state, if you go to my Dad's Chips Fresh Market as well.
Speaker 3:Fresh Market's in Maryland oh wow, if you go to MyDad'sChipscom.
Speaker 4:we have a Find Us tab with an interactive map with all the locations.
Speaker 2:Dad's chipscom, fantastic, yeah, 950 stores. Now that we're in, all right. So let's talk about the different flavors. Here I'm going to take liberty, since it's the what's happening local podcast and I'm the host. And there's these chips. Here I'm going to have a few chips. Why don't you tell me about the different types of chips you have and what are some of the? Uh like what's what's the most popular ones? Uh, what are some of the like what's the most popular ones? What are some of the attributes of these chips? And if you hear some crunch in your ear, it's okay, we can take that sound out.
Speaker 2:We might amplify it a bit. Just tell us about your product line. What chips do you have? And actually, what's your newest one? What's your oldest type of chip?
Speaker 3:So we have five flavor chips. We also have an unsalted chip. I'll start with the flavors. The original chip, the yellow bag right here, is a lightly salted chip. It has about 22% less salt than other salted chips on the market. That's what I used to make in my kitchen, really, and we're able to basically provide a chip with less salt because of the russet potato, because of that real potato flavor that you get from the chip. We don't have to over season and over salt our chips let's, let's just hold it right there.
Speaker 2:You mentioned the russet potatoes several times, as, uh, the the one of the foundations of why chips are so great. How does the average person differentiate a russet potato from other potatoes? Uh, I, I don't. Is it, is it?
Speaker 3:I mean a russet potato is much heartier potato okay, um, it's usually a lot bigger. When you go to the grocery store and are buying a, you know what they put out as a baked potato and stuff.
Speaker 3:Typically those are russet potatoes oh nice um, usually, like in giant, for example, you know they'll sell bags of, you know a 10 pound bag of russet potatoes. Um, the skin sometimes usually is a little bit darker, but the potato itself has a higher starch content and that leads to a lot more flavor within the potato it's kind of hardier.
Speaker 2:More it's a much harder. Yeah, if you're having a meal like a baked potato or something, then you're yep, russet potato.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, most french fries, like mcdonald's french fries are made from russet potatoes and so that typically when you're doing stuff like that, you want to use the russet potato, but it's difficult to cook because of that starch content. That starch converts to glucose when it's being stored and typically, if you don't know what you're doing when you take the potatoes out of storage, you're basically just cooking glucose and that's why you get dark russets or burnt potato chips when you use russets. The very first production run we ever did, we cooked 14,000 pounds of russet potatoes and burned every single chip that we made.
Speaker 2:Whoa, your first production run as a business that has a bottom line. Yeah, 14,000 pounds and thrown away.
Speaker 3:It wasn't pretty.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh Pretty much.
Speaker 3:I can imagine the discussion, yeah we brought them home okay, we were like well, maybe they're not as bad as we think. And then my my wife brian's mom tried them and some other people tried them and they were as bad as we thought they were so but I I said to brian, I said I'd call it the 12 hour rule.
Speaker 3:we have 12 hours to feel sorry for ourself and then we can either put our tail between our legs and go say well, we tried, or we can figure out what went wrong and try to figure this out. Brian said let's figure out what went wrong. Brian, in particular, did a lot of research, but we both did a lot of research to learn about the russet potato. There's 32 varieties of russets. Only about four of them can actually make a potato chip. Really, yeah, most of them have, just they just don't cook properly. And we learned that the hard way.
Speaker 3:Also, and you know, starting to understand which potatoes we could use and which potatoes we couldn't, and then understanding how to coming up with a process that we use to get the potatoes out of storage. That's a key part of um, of how we cook our, what leads to the cooking of our chips and allows us to get a consistent golden brown color as opposed to, as I said before, something that's dark brown fantastic and I ended up kind of cut you short there you were talking about, uh, how you have 20, 22 less yes, less salt in our salt in your originals.
Speaker 3:And what?
Speaker 2:other types of chips do you have? And of course I have French onion here, very flavorful Yep. You can taste the onion. It has also a little smoky kind of flavor as well. Very, very delicious. Thank you. So French onion. It's not quite an endorsement. I can't endorse anything. I'm a government employee but. I will say shop Montgomery County Shop.
Speaker 1:Montgomery.
Speaker 3:County and we also have jalapeno sriracha.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:As far as we know, we're the only jalapeno sriracha chip out there. You sort of get the tang of the sriracha and then a little kick from the jalapeno. So it's not like smoke out of your ears hot, but it does have a nice spice to it. All right, we also have a salt and balsamic vinegar chip. That chip came about because we make a snack in our house called my Dad's Chips Nachos, where we take the original chips and we coat them with mozzarella. We melt the mozzarella and then when it comes out of the oven we put a little balsamic glaze on top.
Speaker 4:Wow, I told you he's a good chef. This sounds great.
Speaker 3:So it's a great little snack, great for like a Superbowl party or something like that. And, uh, when we decided to do a boss, uh, we needed, we needed like a salt and vinegar chip. We said, hey, let's try salt and balsamic vinegar, and that's been been very popular for us.
Speaker 2:Wow, and this is the nuance, is this it's not just salt and vinegar, because there's different types of vinegar. It's balsamic vinegar.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:And that's made a difference for the taste buds of your audience.
Speaker 3:We like to say more flavor, less pucker. There you go, all right. And then we also have a barbecue chip which is more of a traditional barbecue it's not, you know, it's got a little bit of a spice but a little bit of sweetness to it, so it's a real nice flavor. And then we have an unsalted chip called my granddad's chip, because my dad, who is not the dad of my dad, but just loves the unsalted chips, and he was the one who really encouraged us to bring that to market. So people who either don't like salt or are on a low salt diet, they can eat potato chips with and get a very flavorful chip with my dad's or my granddad's chips.
Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to trying those, because I should be on a lower sodium Right now, today for just 20 minutes. We're not on one. I'm enjoying my dad's chips. And speaking of my dad's chips, you mentioned earlier that we are close to Father's Day. It's not lost on any of us now that you and your son have gone to business together. You were making him chips out of love, and he was offering your chips not only because they're great chips, but also because he's proud of what his dad has done in terms of providing chips for the team. What type of message do you have for fathers out there that are raising young men like your son? And then, what advice do you have, brian, when it comes to asking your dad a tough question or to support an idea that you have? So we'll start off with dad giving advice to dads.
Speaker 3:I mean. My advice is always you know, be there to support your children but also encourage them to find out what they're passionate about and pursue that passion, whether it's baseball, making potato chips. You know my daughter's pursuing a career in science and you know whatever that is be there to support them. It may not be something that you know. You might be fortunate enough for me being a huge baseball fan. Have a son who loves baseball. You know you might be fortunate enough for me being a huge baseball fan. Have a son who loves baseball, but your son may be in, or your daughter may be into something that that's not your favorite activity. But make it become your favorite activity, because the more excited you are about it, the more successful they're going to be, the more comfortable they're going to be about being themselves and reaching the best level of success that they can in their life.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. That's incredible. All right Now, Brian, what do you have to say for, as a son, what are some of the best ways to honor your father? But then also, what do you say to young men that sometimes may have a harder time communicating with their father?
Speaker 4:or asking something you know that might even seem to be outrageous, like, hey, let's start a potato chip company, because you make potato chips, yeah Well, the best way to honor him is to start a business and sell his potato chips and that is.
Speaker 2:That is pretty good Okay.
Speaker 4:No, I, I'm. I'm very thankful to have a dad that cares so much about his family. Uh, we mentioned that he's a great chef. He made growing up. He would make my lunch every day for school. He made dinner every night for our family. The dinner table is something that both our immediate and extended family we care very deeply about and put a lot of pride and emphasis in getting together and spending time and connecting about your day, talking about what went well, what went poorly.
Speaker 4:I think that that's an extremely valuable time for families and, with respect to having conversations like that, I'm really lucky that my dad is a very easygoing guy he doesn't get too high or too low and we both operate under an understanding that we didn't know anything about potato chips, about retail, about manufacturing, about distribution, and we both have made mistakes that have cost our business thousands of dollars, and there is no time to dwell on the past. There's no time to say, well, this was your fault, if you had done something different than we would be in a different spot, because it just doesn't help anybody.
Speaker 3:It's a team effort all the way around.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the failures and the successes are all about the team and you know we work through it together and you know I'm super fortunate to be partnered with Brian because he does a lot of the stuff that I have absolutely no idea what we're doing. And it's really like he likes to say it might be my dad's chips, but it's my business, and is really like he likes to say it might be my dad's chips, but it's my business, and he really takes that to heart and runs the business and has created the backbone of what is making my dad's chips successful.
Speaker 2:Wow, and for some of you out there, you hear the chips and you hear our crunchy and how much I enjoy the chips. But what you're also missing is the way that Gary and Brian look at each other Our father looking at his son, his son looking at his father a level of admiration and appreciation for one another. You're going to miss in the podcast, but you will be able to see on the cable channel County of Montgomery, which is the county's government cable TV station and speaking before we started the interview today, this podcast episode. We found out also that their mom or your wife, is also a talented person.
Speaker 2:She's very talented Am I? On the share? Yeah, she worked with one of our affiliate stations, montgomery Community Media, a while ago as a content creator a while ago as a content creator, but she had her own take on making things that was appreciated by a large group of people. Let's take a moment just to talk about that, because it's important to us that we emphasize how much of a resource of course cable television is, not only in America but in Montgomery County, but also as a way to help provide more awareness of the greatness in our communities. Let's talk a little bit, and also you can't talk too much about mom. You know dad and son without talking about mom, because somewhere if mom is not supportive.
Speaker 2:There's, no, there's no chip company. There's no thousands of dollars lost in recovery. So let's talk. Let's talk a little bit about your wife.
Speaker 3:Sure, my wife's name is Bridget and Bridget is an amazing person and does a lot of great stuff, but one of the things she loves to do is refinish furniture. She loves to go yard sailing and find all kinds of items that look like they are just old, beaten up items and turn them into really cool pieces of furniture. Most of the items in our house are probably items that Bridget's turned into really cool stuff, and she had a show called Lip Gloss and a Sander where she used to take people out yard sailing.
Speaker 3:Take a person out yard sailing and then she would bring them back to our house and she would teach them how to refinish that piece of furniture to make a kitchen table or a dresser or a coffee table, whatever.
Speaker 3:She did share all kinds of stuff on her show and it was really cool and people learned a lot from it and, uh, bridget was really did a really great job of explaining it and it. You know, I think the show was on for about two or three years and it was just a really great experience for her and it's something that really, you know, showed her skills off really well.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's what's happening, moco, and right now we are showing off my Dad's Tips All right, with Gary and Brian, who've done a phenomenal job of not just, of course, being a great family and being evident of that, and I'm sure you guys are going to be celebrating Fathers. Are you guys going to celebrate Father's Day? Are you working during Father's Day? I'm actually going up to do a production run of potato chips on Sunday and I'm doing a demo at a grocery store.
Speaker 2:That's okay. Well, they are celebrating their legacies, developing my Dad's Tips. My Dad's Tips. You all can celebrate father's day by giving your loved one a bag of my dad's chips. Uh, courtesy, um of, or in the spirit of gary and brian, that courtesy, pay the money, get the chips, give them to your loved ones. Uh, put them out next to the grill. They are delicious, I guarantee they are delicious. Um, they're crispy, they're crunchy, they're delicious. And um, they're made in montgomery, montgomery, county maryland. Um, and the studio here you find them at, where Wegmans, a giant food store, several smaller organic stores as well.
Speaker 3:A lot of independent grocery stores, beer, wine stores, delis all over Montgomery County.
Speaker 2:Incredible, incredible, and that's what's happening in MoCo. So please, out there, support my Dad's Chips, support the what's Happening in MoCo podcast. Please like, subscribe and share, and, of course, it's MyDadsChipscom for more information. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to what's Happening MoCo. Please subscribe via your favorite podcasting platform and follow us on Facebook. This podcast is brought to you by County Cable Montgomery, your source for news and information from the Montgomery County government. Connect with us via cable, facebook, instagram or YouTube by searching for County Cable MoCo.