Healy: Kettle Chips would have failed without profits from nut business
Cameron Healy · Kettle Chips: Cameron Healy. The Wild Bet That Made a Brand · Mar 2, 2026 · at 26:48
Cameron Healy, founder of Kettle Foods, recalls how a major quality control disaster and rancid oil recall with Safeway in 1983 nearly bankrupted the business.
0:00 / 0:04exact quote · 4.3s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Kettle chips would have never made it. Without the nuts. We had the nut operation.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Cameron Healy
Healy capitalized his early business by speculating on peanut contracts
“I had a broker. I was buying all my peanuts through, and he tipped me off that there was gonna be a big crop failure that year because of drought, and so I went very bullish. I speculated, which was, Really crazy. And I contracted way, way more nuts than I act…”
Healy was fired without severance from the communal businesses he founded
“I was the progenitor of all the businesses in this community. I was always coming up with the next vision and next products, and I think that I was just a threat to kind of what was a movement to slow it down and make it a little more conservative, so I was, S…”
Healy secured a $10,000 bank loan by offering Mount Bachelor ski passes
“I got to know a local banker in Salem who happened to be a avid skier at, in Mount Bachelor, and so I talked him into Giving me a 10,000 dollar working capital loan, and I sweetened the pot with a bunch of free passes to Mount Batchelor.”
Healy: Russet Burbank potatoes yield higher caramelization and flavor in chips
“We chose the Russet Burbank potato because it's, it produces the highest natural sugars, it wants to caramelize with the temperatures, and you get a darker colored product, but there's more flavor.”
Healy: Fryer oil temperature variation creates the signature kettle chip crunch
“What we later learned was that temperature variation is what Really creates the character of a hand-cooked chip, and the, that extra crunchiness.”
Healy: All five major UK supermarket chains ordered Kettle Chips in one week
“The beginning of June, suddenly the product just switched on. It just, word of mouth, Clicked, and we just got deluged with orders, and that's when all five of the supermarket chains all called. In that same week, they all wanted it.”