Kettle Chips: Cameron Healy. The Wild Bet That Made a Brand

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/f4fc9bc1422c1176

There was like a TV host in the UK. She always had kettle chips like she was eating them, and she wasn't even paid. She wasn't like a influencer. She was just eat them on her show, right?
Well, it was similar to what we'd experienced in the US. People started talking and then uh
There was a photo
Uh Princess Die
With a bag of kettle chips and a grocery bag she would go shop days. Can't beat that. That's better than the uh her HRH, you know, seal on the side of the package. Yeah, and so it just uh
It started to get this um
Mystic.

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements.
They built.
I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today how Cameron Healy built a three hundred million dollar brand.
By making potato chips in Salem, Oregon.
Finding a market for them.
Five thousand miles away.
A typical trajectory for a food brand goes something like this.
First, you start small, maybe regional, and then you slowly expand across the US.
And only once you're established, maybe years later.
You try going international.
Well today's guest Cameron Healy pretty much skipped the whole middle part.
Because when his company, KettleChips, was still barely known outside the West Coast,
Cameron made a decision that for most people would make no sense.
Cameron lived in Salem, Oregon.
But he decided to expand sales of his
Thick cut hand cooked potato chips.
in the United Kingdom.
And if you've ever spent time in the UK, you might know what that means.
Britain doesn't just have potato chips, it has an entire culture of crisps.
Endless varieties, endless flavors. Not just salt and vinegar, but prawn cocktail, marmite, pigs in blankets, grilled steak.
It's one of the most competitive, most discerning snack markets in the world.
But Cameron had a hunch that kettle chips with that
extra crunchy, kind of rustic style.
Would stand out.
And he was right.
The brand took off in the UK first.
And only later did it expand across the United States.
Where it eventually became one of the biggest natural potato chip brands in the country.
Now owned by Campbells.
In many ways, this is a story about improbably long distances.
Kettlechips was based in Oregon.
But the inspiration came from a trip Cameron took to Hawaii.
And about a decade into building the chip business,
Another trip to Hawaii sparked yet another idea.
It's time for a beer brand.
Kona Brewing.
For a while, Cameron was juggling both chips and beer.
Logging thousands of miles between Oregon, Hawaii, and his most successful early market,
The UK.
And through plenty of anxious moments.
Cameron seems somehow
Mostly undaunted.
And part of that might go back to his upbringing.
His dad was an entrepreneur who turned a simple rope tow and warming hut in Bend, Oregon.
into what became the Mount Bachelor Ski Resort.
But another part of Cameron's grace under pressure comes from his many years of meditation and yoga.
And eventually his deep involvement in the Sik community.
In the early 1970s,
Cameron ran an organic bakery near Eugene, Oregon.
And then
A few years later, he relocated with his wife and young family to Salem.
Where he continued living communally.
as a Sikh.
Yeah, it was in a way it was kinda the post woodstock.
Seventies um it was certainly
trending and you know, from my experience it was very empowering.
Yeah, because
It was a gr a wonderful sense of
purpose in creating kind of an alternative
Culture.
economy, you know, is a form of rebellion, but constructive rebellion is what I would call it.
Well so let me just imagine this. You you get there in nineteen seventy three to Salem, Oregon.
And you and your wife.
Who are
sort of young white family, but you're wearing turbans
And
You're dressed like uh like you would be a Sikh.
And was that
Uh and your kids were also wearing
Turbans.
I don't know, I'm just imagining a tiny place like Salem in in nineteen seventy three. Did anybody
Uh notice you? I'm sure they did. Did they do you remember the reactions that you got?
Well, s certainly it wasn't sort of the the best way to fit in, but
That wasn't really our goal. Our goal was to you know bring yoga and meditation.
To that.
community and
One of the requirements.

three in the morning and do two and a half hours
Of group yoga and meditation. Wow.
you know, builds a lot of character. Uh I was
Yeah, wasn't that employable the way I looked and so that
caused me to um
start a new business which was
Yeah, the natural food movement which was gr growing and a lot of
Products were being developed.
And I

So I decided to
become a distributor of natural foods. And and just to clarify, so you this is the mid-70s, the sort of the natural foods
movement was really starting. It it was coming out of the hippie movement and there was a kind of back to the land and whole grains and
You were seeing people making products and you thought, Hey
I could distribute them. I could get all these products and then distribute them to
stores in the area. That was the idea you had?
Exactly. I knew the stores, I had the contacts, and so I um
I talked my father into loaning me a little bit of the money to buy an old refrigerated truck'cause
Only time I ever
borrowed money from him and I started distributing uh
Raw milk.
And so it was initially
dairy oriented and then I started bringing
snack food makers and
Ultimately I had a a weekly
Truck that would come up from the
Southern California with these products that I would distribute and um you had a refrigerator truck that you yourself would drive.
All over Oregon.
Mm-hmm.
Seattle to southern Oregon, I five corridor. And that probably took you a couple of days, right?
Yeah.
Yeah that
Took good chunk of the week.
But you know, I needed to put food on the table and um
It ultimately I gave m turned over my ownership to the
You know, the community ownership.
By then we had
We were living communally.
So eventually uh you know we're employing quite a number of people.
And this was a lifestyle that fulfilled, you know, so many of our
Dreams and
For you know, living in this
ideally counterculture manner. Um it wasn't until
Nineteen.
Seventy eight.
Where the bubble kinda popped.
A little bit.
And the bubble of what? Of natural food.
Idyllic

Well the um
Natural foods as a movement was growing tremendously. There was lots of
New products and it was scaling and
Challenging these
Yeah, these grassroots
Business people who
had had no prior training to adapt and
And run these businesses properly, but
What
What end up happen I you know I was the progenator 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 uh
A movement to
slow it down and make it a little more conservative. So I was
summarily dismissed from the businesses.
I was
Basically fired and of course there was no
No severance money or anything. So I was with four kids in uh
No no income. I was Wow.
Kind of out the door.
Did you uh feel angry or resentful when that happened?
Yeah, I th I did.
I definitely did, but I was also still very
committed to the overall vision and
movement of the community and so, you know, I sucked it up, but I had to find some income.
And pretty quickly, yeah.
But I mean at that point, you know, you had
experience in the natural foods business so
W were you thinking that you could still do something w with that, like maybe sell your your own natural foods or or what?
Well, I wasn't sure what exactly I was gonna do. I was basically
Living by my wits and my
previous experiences, but I knew that
I was gonna start a business that was gonna be my own for my own ownership.
Uh
I wasn't sure exactly how it would evolve. My main priority was just uh
Get enough income to
feed my family. Right. So uh that was
Distributing.
Cheese, bulk cheese.
Which within a year uh I started
Bulk nuts.
Uh but I had to get
Some working capital.
And um
I got to know a a local banker in Salem.
who happened to be a um avid skier at in Mount Bachelor and um
So um I talked'em into
giving me a ten thousand dollar working capital loan.
And I sweetened the pot with a bunch of free passes to Mount Bachelor.
You shouldn't have been loaning me money I was at complete complete risk. There was And he he loaned you money to start a business. You called it the N S Culsa Company, and the business
'Cause you had been for about a year distributing, as you say, distributing cheese and nuts, and this business was going to be
What?
Well, it was yeah, the nut distribution
Evolved into starting to roast nuts to add value. So you would instead of buying nuts that are already packaged or ready to be
You would m
Produce your own.
Roast your own nuts and then sell them. Okay.
I managed with that some of that loan money I
purchased a uh probably a nineteen thirties
Dry roaster.
And um
Started
Roasting bulk nuts, um mostly
A lot of peanuts for
Find your own.
Peanut butter in natural food stores.
And that's
ultimately evolved into making um
Trail mixes.
And then ultimately making our own branded
Peanut butter and almond butter.
How was the nut business? I mean, we've was it successful? Were you doing very well? Like how how did you you know, two, three years in,
Did you find it to be challenging or did you start to really
See some results.
Well, it was um yeah, I think by
I'd let's call it maybe nineteen eighty, you know. I had a little nice little factory in Salem uh with a warehouse.
I had a a broker I was buying all my peanuts through.
And um
He tipped me off that there was um
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 contracting way, way more
nuts than I actually was currently
Producing
Mm-hmm.
Sure enough, I was sitting on all these
valuable contracts and the market for uh peanuts essentially tripled.
So I ended up
Selling truckloads of
You know, fifty thousand pounds of peanuts.
And I was making like twenty five thousand dollars a truckload.
And that's
That effort capitalized my little business, which
Prior to that was
Extremely thin on working capital.
All right, so you're you are you've got this nuts mainly nuts business. Uh and I'm not sure this is this is really the story or if it's apocryphal or maybe it is the story, I don't know. But but from what I've read
Around nineteen eighty two, so you're about four years into the business.
You are in Hawaii.
And you are on the beach and uh you have some de someone s gives you homemade potato chips, which uh if anyone's made homemade potato, you should make them. They're amazing. You just use a mandolin, you slice them on the mandolin, you fry them. I've done it for dinner parties. People are amazed when you give them homemade potato chips, they're delicious.
You tried these and
You already from what I understand you're you were thinking about what other products could I sell, and this was like a light bulb moment. Is that is that true? Is that what happened? It's a good story. Uh
Uh not exactly true. Uh I had read about the Maui Potato Chip Company. I'd read an article in the Wall Street Journal.
That it's
Gotten my attention, uh planted a seed.
And so I was
Considering the idea of making handmade
Potato chips'cause we had oil roasters we made
Not sin.
And um
But yeah, I went.
Went to Hawaii um for a
A vacation but
Also to
Check out the Maui potato chip companies.
This is the early eighties. This was a potato chip that was thicker.
crunchier, right? It didn't taste like a a lay's
Chip. Like it's and it was totally different from anything else out there at the time.
Exactly. And um
I called up this gentleman and told him who I was and I'd like to Maui chip company. Yeah, I'd like to meet him.
And he said.
Sure, come over. So I showed up this little this little industrial
a state.
metal building and uh he came out and greeted me, very nice man
Filipino man, I had a grandchild on his hip, couple of dogs running around and
Had this little
Factory was making
Potato chips and uh
You know, I got to ask him a few questions. He would not invite me into the factory, though. I never got to see how he made them, but
The one big takeaway
was um
I remember reading the article and it talked about these special Maui potatoes he was using and
And I said, So tell me about these Maui potatoes you
You're gr growing potatoes here and he laughed. He goes No, that was
That was a misunderstanding. There's no
regular potatoes grow in Hawaii.
All of my
Potatoes come from Klamath Falls, Oregon. Wow.
So my the light bulb went off with well, if this guy can
Make
such a splash and be in the Wall Street Journal.
And have this

He's bringing his potatoes all the way from
Oregon and I'm
Based in Oregon, I can do this.
When we come back in just a moment.
Cameron learns how to fry potato chips through careful trial and error.
Until one error.
Ends in disaster.
Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to How I Built This.
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz.
So it's early 1982, and Cameron has just met with the owner of the Maui Potato Chip Company in Hawaii.
And after that meeting
He's convinced that making potato chips in Oregon is the best way to grow his business.
Chips are a very high turnover product category.
People are also
very committed to their brand, particularly with potato chips. So
That was that had been registered in the back of my mind.
A few years before
And I
Enjoyed the nut business, but I knew
It would always be limited.
Geographic and
I also knew I sensed that natural foods would
grow beyond just the natural food store.
It would eventually
Go into the mainstream.
And I wanted I wanted a product that could bridge that.
Gap in uh
Be in the supermarkets.
'Cause you're thinking, hey, this could be interesting.
This crunchy
small batch potato chip, right? Because
Again, potato chips like I grew up on ruffles and
you know, big bags of ruffles and you know, frioleys and
And and that is basically from what I now I've uh d d d dove into potato chips while I was researching the story.
And I guess the way those are made is c it's like a continuous fry process. So basically
The chips run through a vat of hot oil and then they're getting dried.
And they're on a conveyor belt and
They're very thin and
But when you eat a
Like one of these Hawaiian ships.
It's totally different. So you go back to Oregon.
And like with this idea.
It's sort of
Percolating now really at
thinking, okay, I gotta figure out how to do this.
Well
Actually on that let I'm just trying to
Remember
Sequences.
I had already
Created a brand.
On paper.
Uh and I had spent I remember
twelve hundred dollars with a
graphic designer in Salem, Oregon, which
at that time seemed like an absolute fortune.
I was going to originally call the product
Hot chips?
P. O T. Pot. Yeah. So I thought that would be a good
A good name and so you thought it would be good calling it pot chips.

Yeah, I thumbs down everyone said that that word
That's just not the word you want to use.

mean a lot of different things.
You know, that it was a stupid idea.
So I went when I got back from Hawaii I went to this
Same designer I say, I want you to same design, I just want you to change
Pot to kettle.
That's how kettle chips.
became a brand.
So h's my question. You were roasting
peanuts, right? And
And so
Was was it sort of a
You know, this is like in an era before you could just go on YouTube and figure out how to do things, right? There weren't easily like internet manuals. Like today, we have had founders on the show are like I had no idea how to make clothes. I just went on YouTube and learned about it and then start a brand. Like literally these are stories we tell today, which is crazy. D w was it a big leap to go
from roasting nuts to learning how to fry
Potato slices and make them in tubes.
Kettle cooked.
Potato chips? Was that a big sort of leap, or was it easy?
Well it it was and it wasn't uh it wasn't because we had these
Priors we knew
for oil temperatures and
It was
A big leap because
Potatoes don't
Um behave like nuts behave uh
It seemed like every
load of potatoes we would bring in.
would be a little different in the way they fried.
It was completely trial and error idle team.
And um
We started in the late spring uh buying Russet Burbank potatoes and we chose the Russet Burbank potato because it's
It produces the highest natural sugars. It wants to caramelize with the temperatures then you get.
A darker colored product, but
There's more flavor.
Interesting.
Um did you have equipment that automated any of this? Or were you literally hand peel was it teams of people hand peeling potatoes and then hand
slicing them on a m mandolin and then hand frying them.
Well in the in the very beginning we only made
Potato chips at night.
Because our factory was making
Nuts during the day and so used.
Uh we had a
Two oil fryers, which was a vat
Maybe
Four and a half feet.
long by four feet wide in uh
I purchased a food service
Potato slicer which was not
Adequate, but we made it work and we would
Hand feed.
The potatoes we bought them in hundred and
In um
Fifty pound bags.
And this is a four foot vat of hot oil. Yeah, you would
Monitor the temperature of the oil and
When you slice the potatoes in, the temperature drops and then it gradually
comes up and uh
What we
Later learned was that temperature
Variation is what
really creates the character of a hand cooked chip and the that extra crunchiness.
So
Starting out we can make forty cases
A night.
So twelve bags to a case.
But it was all
all very much by hand. And I I have
I have the photograph that
Shows me holding
The first
First two bags of
Kettle chips off the lines.
Young guy and uh
Turban in late July of nineteen eighty two with a big big grin on my face. Yeah.
And imagine, I mean this is a premium product, right? Because it's handmade potato chips. And how much do you remember how much did a bag cost in nineteen eighty three?
Oh boy.
Um
Less than a dollar. I think, um, you know, I think ninety nine cents was

Number? But probably still like a bag of lays was twenty five cents, right? At the time. You know how how much
I don't think we're that
much of a premium from Lays. You know, I would say we were probably twenty five percent.
Premium. And how were you
making sure people tried them and bought them. Like what were you doing to get people to
to buy one of these bags? Were they put by the register? Like what was the strategy? Um initially guy um
There was no marketing. We just put'em on the shelf.
Um we did within
six months we started doing tastings in stores and things when we had more capacity, but initially
Um
The stores promoted them.
There were were the Maui.
chips in Hawaii that were probably only available in Hawaii.
Was there anything like
Kettle chips.
in the US. I mean I know there's there's Cape Cod brand. I don't know if that was around yet. It might have been, but was there
Were there other as far as you knew at that time anyone else making small batch, sort of thick cut?
super crispy, crunchy potato chips.
There were some makers in the east.
Cape Cod had started
I don't know, probably
A year or less than a year before us.
And so they existed um
There was one in New Orleans, I think, called Zaps. Oh Zaps is still around. Yeah. You know, ex they started about the same time we did, I believe. Got it. Okay, so it's the summer of nineteen eighty two.
And you guys are making
forty cases of of potato chips a night.
Uh so what was the next step? Like w were you thinking about expanding or and and or making more?
Yeah, um so I talked our landlord into building a building
It's in Salem, Oregon. In Salem, which he did. Yeah. Um I then
Got a bank loan. I ordered
All new equipment and by um
I think by December
of eighty two we had moved our production
Into this new factory which
Couldn't
Produce a whole lot more.
Kettle chips and so
by January or so Safeway
Northern California division came calling.
And they were very enthusiastic and they wanted to
Put them in all their stores, but
Two
fulfill that we had to go to a second shift, a night shift.
And um
I was actually in San Francisco.
On a certain day getting ready.
with my family.
I was gonna make my
T a trip to India. Yeah, I was still Sikh.
One of my main people
At our factory in Salem, Jim Green.
Yeah, there were no cell phones in those days.
And I was
At the terminal waiting to catch a f
Pan Am flight and I got paged
And it was my guy, uh, Jim.
and sounding pretty stressed out, but when
Uh Safeway, Northern California.
got their product, they tested them and
The oil was rancid in the chips.
And they were rejecting the whole truckload.
We didn't understand.
The management of fire oil.
And how it it degrades and
It just so happened when we went to the second shift.
that threw the balance off
And so
I was
Literally about to step on this.
flight and I had to tell my
Guy said I'm sorry, you gotta figure it out. And um
So I went to India amidst this
Kind of this disaster.
Yeah, I
It was hard to make phone calls even from India, but I
was able to kinda stay in touch, but we had to take a lot of product back and by the time I got back, you know, we had shut down the plant.
Uh demand had
kind of evaporated for the moment and uh
It was

situation because I'd taken out some large loans to
Set up this new plant.
Fortunately.
The nut operation
Made a small profit in it.
It buoyed up. You know, kettle chips would have never made it.
Without the nuts. Um I imagine Safeway canceled its contract. They did not come back to you. Yeah. Now so you had you had one shot with Safeway and you blew it. We blew it.
And the reputation.
And so I
went up to Seattle for a little na regional natural food trade show to
Talk to our customers to tell them that we were
Fixing the problem and
On the drive back, my then wife was driving and
I was pretty pretty depressed. Uh
about the whole situation and pretty down about it and
Um my wife
fell asleep at the wheel on I five.
And the car went out of control.
And skidded across the
southbound lanes. Wow. And then rolled up on the very outside onto a
Grass bank with all the windows.
breaking out of the car and uh
We were all fortunately okay. I

Wow. So that was kind of a wake up. We were kind of blessed by
Not getting
Hard and
It kind of jolted me.
Out of my um
you know, bit of depression about where we were and so it just said okay
You know, we we're gonna figure it out. And so we got it together and started making good product again and
We managed to
To get through that period.
Well
Alright, so
by the time I think the company, as I as I understand, in like nineteen eighty three, overall was doing three million in sales.
In nineteen eighty six
the company was doing four and a half million in sales, which is nice, you know, it's growth, but it's not
explosive growth, but I I think it it makes sense now.
Yeah.
about the challenges and the crisis
That's the thing.
you face with kettle chips because you you took on a lot of debt.
to finance it.
Um
I wanna turn now to
um nineteen eighty seven because th this is sort of the the backdrop to where
You are. You got kettle chips. It's it's uh you've recovered from the crisis, but it's still a
pretty small regional brand.
And you go on a trip to England, a a motorcycle trip with your nineteen year old son.
In nineteen eighty seven.
And this gonna become a very important trip. But you were just going there to have a vacation, am I right? Around to s m cycle around Europe or motorcycle around Europe? Yeah, in general, um things were by then going well with our
Kettle Foods operation, I had a good team, I had management team.
I had never been to Europe and I wanted
I wanted to
Sort of experienced the food cultures of Europe?
And also kind of a coming of the
coming of age, trip with my son who was nineteen,
Um and in a way
Without admitting it, it was sort of a coming of age for myself.
Uh I want to get out into the world and explore it a little more.
And I guess it was during that trip.
That you met up with
An American guy that was living in the UK named Tim Meyer, who I I guess you had been introduced to
Yeah.
Uh and I'm j I'm jumping a a little bit ahead here, but but I guess
You ended up
kind of starting to talk with Tim about
bringing kettle chips to to the UK and
I mean how did that idea start? Like what's what's the story?
Right, well Tim uh was a gentleman from um Salem, Oregon originally.
But he be he'd gone on to become a
A banker in London
Um and
We hit it off. He was a really interesting
gentleman and uh he had
Left the banking world very recently.
in London and was figuring out what he's gonna do next. But yeah.
And how do the two of you start to talk about maybe bringing kettle chips?

to start selling on there.
Well, you know, I'm being interested in the food cultures, I was
Eager to um
Yeah, look at some stores. Look at some
What they call the crisp.
Market and
In England.
Tim made a list of stores to go to and collect.
Certain brands of
English crisps.
I remember we were all at a big table with
All these bags spread out and opening them and

The flavors but um
You know, I began to feel
You know, kind of a cultural change.
A foot.
drove our the natural food movement.
Particularly on the west coast of the US
A lot of those lifestyle values
Around
Yeah, health and fitness and
All those things I started to sense
that there were that was just beginning
in the UK and
London particularly.
And that um
Kettle chips as a
Natural foods
Product.
It would be an opportunity to
Really pioneer a category? Okay. I wanna I w I wanna break this down a little bit because
You're coming off a year of doing around four and a half million dollars in overall sales. She're a very small company and kettle
Chips is a very small brand. And you are
In England in nineteen eighty seven, and you're noticing there is a th and anyone who's been there will see there's like ham and pickle flavor and beef and mustard flavor chips and all these we like they have had
Weird potato chip flavors for a long time. Crisps, right? What they call crisps.
Um
So you see this and you think, Hey, there's nothing like kettle chips here, you know, uh and maybe we can
Enter this market.
That's what you start to think.
Yeah, being an entrepreneur, I saw an opportunity. I mean it was a
would be a very large leap to pull something like that off, but I felt that the brand
the product would have uh
Potentially.
Yeah.
Okay.
That I understand.
But this is
Here's where what I don't understand, and I say this because this is gonna be pivotal to your business. But
nineteen eighty seven. You are a tiny
regional brand in Oregon and Washington State.
So thousands of miles away from England, this is before the internet, this is before cell phones, before email, this is like fax machine.
Era right.
you're thinking, hey, the next logical move for us is to go to the UK, I would have thought
Somebody would have said Cameron
You know, maybe you should think about expanding to the east coast or maybe the Midwest of the United States first, like, why would you even think about going to the UK? Like, did anybody
Anything in your brain say, you know, maybe we should expand the US first.
Good insight. And um you know my
My best
Answer to that is
I really enjoyed being in Europe. I really enjoyed
in the UK and I had a hunger for more.
I felt there was an opportunity, but I also
Wanted to have an excuse to have to keep going back.
Fair enough. Okay, but i again not a good uh
business uh strategy, but
Yeah, it was it was naive.
It was completely
naive, but I'm also a believer that
Really, very few good things happen without
a level of naivety in the beginning. Otherwise if you knew how hard it would be, you would never do it.
Yeah.
So you decide I wanna go into it's it it it actually
On so many levels I should now
play devil's advocate to my previous argument.
On so many levels, this actually makes sense because there was a potato chip culture in the UK that was stronger than maybe anywhere else in the world.
'Cause people went to pubs, they drink beer, they want a salty snack, and you and if you go to a pub, there's always a big wall of crisps that you can
border and they'll you know, or get a nice pint of beer, some salty crisps, great.
So in many ways this actually made a lot of sense because
You are gonna introduce this.
Interesting different
Kind of potato chip.
And and into a culture that was already primed to wanna like this thing.
But I also felt that because of that
That tendency for
The product to generate
Through mouth.
This kind of mystique.
I somehow felt
that this would be very possible in the UK and that it's
But the but the the challenges now are
They're insurmountable in my m like
you've gotta now find a place to make them and find uh distribution channels and gr and like you have no
So where did you start? I mean because w I should say you launched this thing
less than two years later in the UK, nineteen eighty nine, but until you get to that point.
Wh how do you start to make this into a reality?
Well the
In the last
couple days that my son and I w were in the UK we were uh we were in
London and
We agreed that the following spring I would come back
to London and we would investigate this with more seriousness. So I went back, you know, got back involved in life and business and
I think January or so
I went and bought a a suit and tie. I hadn't own one.
'Cause I figured you do the business
In England you gotta dress up.
And um
Got on a
plain and uh
packed some samples of kettle chips and flew over
And um
Tim had
Organized a meeting with a potato supplier up in
The Norfolk region, which is northeast of
London, couple hours.
We'd also
made contact with a company called
Durant Valley Foods
They began making
Tortilla chips, the first tortilla chips in the UK, but doing pretty well uh with their brand. Um what was their brand called Um Phileas Fog was their brand. Oh, I remember those. Right named after the guy from the Jules Verne book, but I remember that brand Phileas. Yeah.
Yeah, they had their own distribution company and Tim had made a connection with
Small group of convenience stores inside London.
train stations and they'd agreed to let it let us put
Cuttle chips.
display them, we give them the product for free.
And um they could keep all the revenue, but they had to give us
be willing to be interviewed about what their experience was.
Yeah, so
All the product.
sold out in all three stores that first weekend and we
We had very positive feedback from each of the managers and so
That was the extent of our research. We said okay, we're
The consumer wants the product over here.
And on the strength of that, I guess you go to a uh food convention in London. They were they were introduced at the food convention.
And so that was there.
Significant demand.

These bags of chips.
From the get go?
Well we
You know, we didn't know.
Our main goal was to set up a network of independent distributors.
Uh small distributors.
to get our products in initially the smaller stores.
Yeah.
Okay, I so
From what I understand
you initially the first few months you managed to get
small distribution
mainly on the shelves at Heathrow Airport, which is actually a great place to be
Then things went quiet for a while. There were no reorders for some time, which I from what I read made you quite nervous.
It did. We through these small distributors we got initial production and
But then there weren't
New orders coming because
We had no marketing, you know, we were counting on disc the consumers discovering
the product on the shelf and so
We didn't really anticipate though how quiet things would be, but it went quiet and
You know, I had literally bet the farm
With loans to
set up a factory over there and I figured either
It's just gonna take time for word of mouth and then it will take off.
Or
We've

Wanna pay a premium price.
And or maybe they don't want the product, but
It was one of the two and
So yeah, I I was
Sweating bullets.
And we come back in just a moment.
As kettle chip starts to take hold in the UK,
Cameron decides to launch a new venture.
About as far from London as you can get.
Stay with us, I'm Guy Raj, and you're listening to How I Built This.
Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz.
So it's around nineteen eighty nine, and Cameron has risked his whole company by expanding into the UK. But with no marketing budget, he's counting on word of mouth for people to discover.
His kennel chips.
Some orders started coming in, but it w they were small, and uh 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. They all saw it as a
Symbol of this
Kind of new way of
Natural foods that they wanted to get into.
T.
Yeah. I think I think it was evident it was American brand.
It had the package was, however, adapted
to the UK somewhat, but we still
Called them kettle chips.
Not kennel crisps.
So it's interesting'cause the brand
grew very, very fast.
in the UK. It took off like a rocket. It took off. And it very quickly surpassed the sales you were doing
in the US you are selling more kettle chips in the UK, much more than you were selling in the US.
Yeah, we'd
Jumped over the ocean, you know, and
Skip the East Coast.
And and I think there was like a T V host in the UK at
the time an American woman who lived there named Ruby Wax, who was a very popular TV show, and I think she
She always had kettle chips like uh she was eating them and she wasn't even paid. She wasn't like a paid influencer. She was just eat them on her show, right? Well, it was similar to what we'd experienced in the US, where
We got product placement not
Anything that we'd engineered.
And so people
started talking and then uh
There was a photo.
Uh Princess Guy.
With a bag of kettle chips and a grocery bag, she would
Go shop in those days. Can't beat that. That's better than the uh her HRH, you know, seal on the side of the package.
Yeah, and so it just uh
You know, it started to get this um mystique.
And then we
Tim Meyer became ever more
involved and
He has a finance background. He insisted on
putting a very a more premium
price on the product than I would have.
You said well
Yeah.
Takes off.
you know, we will be able to gain profitability much quicker. And so it uh it did and we had to keep
expanding the factory and buying more equipment and those were big investments, but
we were able to um you know we had a small banking relationship but largely we were self funded in our growth.
Which was pretty amazing, actually.
I would think
The success of this product in the UK
It's like almost like a backdoor way to expand in the US. Did that then make it easier for you to say to go to a Kroger or, you know, an another
supermarket brand say, Hey, do you guys want our product or or do they start to come to you because they had heard about this product in the UK?
Well I think less so that
More so
We had a m way more sophisticated sales team in the UK and so
You know, we ultimately
Got to the the you know, the east coast and
Did well, but I think the education we got.
Doing business.
In the UK was absolutely key. And you probably also had to or had to, but you probably introduced like some unusual flavors in Britain, right? To for that like ham and pickle or we did.
Yeah. I mean we didn't go totally crazy but yeah.
Flavors we wouldn't do in the US, but
Actually uh one of the most successful
Flavors even today is the
Crinco cut in the US.
Salt and pepper in that flavor.
pioneered in the uh UK and then
created a version in the US.
Uh okay, let's now
pivot to something so totally different and I guess not weird, but d you are seeing incredible success with kettle chips in the UK.
Um you
Take another family vacation to Hawaii.
This is in around nineteen ninety three.
And um while you're there, I guess you
This sort of the craft beer.
Boom is just
gonna start at this moment. And you are from Oregon.
tradition in Oregon and you I'm assuming Lovecraft Beer, but you're there and you realize hey, no one's making
craft beer in Hawaii.
Why don't we do this? Like you've got this whole business kettle.
I mean, were you just restless? Did you feel like okay, I've done that, I need to start something new?
Well, it it actually has a l a link all the way back to
My time in England and that
being a yogi and a Sikh, you didn't drink alcohol. Right. But while you know I was beginning to transition out of that and
I you know discovered real L's
In England and with Tim we would go to his
Neighborhood pub and have our
Planning sessions and
Joy a pint. And so coming back

became aware of the craft brewing movement which
really was analogous almost to the natural food movement. It was a
alternative to the industrial
approach to making beer and
Yeah, I my son had same son that I went to
Europe with the motorcycle had gone to this is Spoon, right? Spoon, yes. And is Spoon his nickname or is that his real name? Yeah.
Okay.
And he had gone to
Hawaii on vacation.
with his Portland girlfriend and didn't come back. They said they found paradise and they found jobs
Yeah, on the big island of Hawaii in Kona.
And I decided to come over for Thanksgiving and
We run a large.
House on this
Bay in South Kona.
But while there I just
Had this epiphany
That I I had to
figure out how to live part time not only in Hawaii, but on that bay, in that specific area. Just it spoke to my
spiritual self that by then was no longer a Sikh and
Um but out of that same trip there was no beer being brewed in Hawaii and
very little craft beer being imported and
I just, you know, talked to my son, I said why don't we
Together.
a brewery and I'll I'll mentor you. I'll so um I contracted
An advisor in Portland to design
The brewing equipment.
I'm just curious, what was the idea of I mean
Hawaii I love Hawaii, I'd live there in a second. Um but it doesn't produce hops or malt. I think it's too much.
Uh tropical to produce those two things. What would a sign like a Hawaiian be I'm thinking like a
Like a l crisp lager, right? Like that you have outdoors when you're like a Mexican beer a little bit. Was that the idea you had? Like what would a Hawaiian beer
Taste like.
Well, an impression again, another Hawaiian impression.
uh was when I was fifteen years old
I went to Hawaii for the first time, Waikiki with my family.
And I became aware of
Primo beer, which was the beer of Hawaii.
Uh was a big deal in those days.
Yeah.
By the time we started
Primo didn't exist. It had been bought out and
left the market and I just
Sense that there was one
Not unlike
launching kettle chips in the UK, there was a timing window.
Two
Pioneer.
Making local craft beer.
With a Hawaiian brand that would have that.
Mystique not unlike
Primo beer.
Um
Th there are a lot of challenges of distributing beer, at least at that time in Hawaii, because
even though Hawaii is, you know, each island is small, it's like two hundred seventy miles from Kona all the way to Kawaii, and you've got to distribute the beer across the islands. It's very expensive. I think the taxes on liquor and and and alcohol in Hawaii are very high.
a lot of challenges. My my biggest question about the challenges is
You were the CEO of Kettle. You've got a plant in Salem, you've got a thriving
business in the UK and you're starting a beer company with your son, so
Or are you flying like Kona to Salem to London to
to Salem to Kona, like was that your life?
You know, by that point we had a gr a really good team in the UK
And we had a good team.
in Oregon and um
I was able to
You know, have a little bit of arm's length.
role but also
having been a yogi, I still do yoga and meditation.
That always balanced that kept me in a
a a healthy mindset and help the stress from
overwhelming me, particularly in high risk.
Periods. But uh
We got the
The Burry Open uh
Ninety five we produced the first beer.
I thought it you know, we could
figure out this manufacturing thing in Hawaii, but I quickly
became aware of how expensive it is to manufacture in Hawaii and why why there weren't any beer producers in Hawaii. But
It's uh kind of
plateaued at a certain sales that
causing it to lose about twenty thousand dollars a month.
And this went on
Not for months, but for several years.
Wow. So so what happened? I mean, obviously we know
Cona Brewing turned into a successful brand. So so what turned it around? I mean
Twenty thousand a month is a is a serious amount of money to be losing.
Yeah, and I was the one that had to uh
Cover the cost.
I think it got very stressful for my son. He did a good job getting it to a certain

But um
At a certain point he moved uh moved off island.
Left the business and
I recruit a young young guy in Portland that I
We worked together and it was you know it was tough.
This first six months, but then we made made some key decisions to
Move the bottle part of the production to
The mainland find a good
contract producer because that's where we were losing our shirt.
You know, it's interesting. I know um I mean that you start the brand, the brand officially launches in nineteen ninety five and it was
sold in twenty ten.
Um
Yeah. Partially sold, yeah.
Partially sold.
But it sounds like it's still a tough business, that the like
Potato chips.
Great.
profitable and and but that the the beer business
It took a lot longer to turn this into a
Profitable business.
Well, it took three years to turn into a profitable business by
uh January of uh
Nineteen ninety nine.
We became profitable.
Went into the black.
Okay, so I want to go back to Kettle and I guess by the early two thousands you and
Your partner Tim, who was really kind of
I guess overseeing operations in the UK.
you decided that you you needed to grow or to scale, you needed a a more professional board, you needed a and and I guess you brought on a a private equity firm. You sold a a a chunk of the brand to them.
What is the idea in two thousand four at this point? Hey, you know, let's
We've got this really successful brand. Let's start to

An an acquirer.
Yes, we were
By that point, yeah, we're doing about a hundred million dollars.
And sales.
Uh scaling and scaled
But Tim and I were
were the board of directors, we were co CEOs
And we were
Literally making all of our key decisions and
Pubs and restaurants.
Sit down, have a meal and make those decisions. And you know, that worked well. But we realized we needed a
proper board with some outside
Influence to help.
Kind of guide the next
coming years because um
We felt there were even greater opportunities, but
Tim had a relationship.
With a gentleman Michael Chuck.
Canterton partners
Their specialty was building consumer
brands. That was their the focus of their private equity business. Still is today. Got it. And so um
What we're gonna do, they're gonna buy a third
Third of the business and uh
We're also going to
recruit a top flight CEO global CEO
And bring in a
group that Catterton worked with to do
strategic plans and which we never
really done a strategic
Comprehensive strategic plan.
So you
You sell a third of the company to this
private equity firm with the intention clearly
to sort of set the business up to get
uh uh acquired for more money.
And that happens within I think by two thousand six it's announced that
the brand is going to be
Uh acquired.
By a UK based
Investment firm call Lion Capital. They bought out um
cattle foods uh reportedly for about three hundred over three hundred million dollars.
Yeah, we
Weird.
Grown the business by
Fifty percent and
As a board we agreed that if a certain
dollar amount offer came in then we would we would consider it. It was sooner than
Sooner than what we'd plan, but
You know, I've been at it for twenty seven years. And an amazing outcome. I mean three hundred and twenty million dollars.
And you guys still own sixty seven percent of the business. I mean
Incredible.
Um you know.
I I don't think anybody would would turn that down.
Yeah, and I have no regrets. It was uh
It was a good good journey. My I realized that
My time had come and
Along with Tim's.
They they went on to sell it, I think, for six hundred over six hundred million dollars in two thousand ten.
The brand kettle
Has gone through since then. Diamond Foods, which bought it was bought by Snyder's Lance. People may know their pretzels, and then Snyder's Lance was purchased by Campbell's for almost five billion dollars. So Campbells actually now is the owner of
the kettle chips brand. And so now, you know, you go to any grocery store and there's like kettle chips on the shelves and
Th basically now it's owned by Campbells. Right.
So that was it. So was your time I mean, you didn't ha at that point had no business interests in Salem. I mean I'm assuming you stuck around for a little while to help with the transition, but basically that was it, right?
Yeah, I didn't uh you know, we were Tim and I were given a small
incentive to
Be advisors for a year.
But
We both sat in on the first um
Conference call with
The
operator that Lang Capital.
Had brought in to oversee the company a Scotsman.
Very dynamic.
forceful individual and
sat in on the first management uh
call which you know I I've never done I've always been in charge.
And uh
After that first call, both Tim and I said, Well, we're not doing that. We didn't do all this to sit in the back of the bus and
You know.
We declined on that opportunity. So I I basically walked away.
When it's sold.
one of the things you were able to do with your newfound resources was to start a foundation
And I think a lot of your
Focuses on like um
environmental issues, I think even domestic abuse.
And
I read that the
board of your foundation voted last year
to spend the entire endowment down within by
by twenty twenty nine.
Which is it's like Brewster's millions. You gotta give away how big is it is it seventy five, eighty million dollars this this uh foundation?
Yeah, in that arena.
Tell me about that. Why
Why spend it now? You know, why not just keep it going for another fifty yeah?
You know, I'm
Turning seventy five this week and
looking at it more than a year ago is that I didn't want to
Have to worry about
managing a foundation through my eighties, but also preparing it for the future.
When I was gone, I just I decided that's yeah that's too much. And uh but yeah, it's been a whole game changer.
It's kinda turbocharged our own.
our organization and um
We were given the award last year of the
outstanding foundation in Hawaii which
It was nice to have that recognition. That's awesome.
Yeah.
Cameron.
You know, when you think about your story, right, I mean you you
sort of started your early adulthood as you know part of this movement and and living community and and
for a variety of reasons you w went off on your own and then
kind of stumbled into this idea of potato chips which became
a massive brand, right? I mean it's it is a an iconic brand today and
You uh became very successful and wealthy as a result of it. And when you think about
How it allows you.
Kinda worked out.
How much of your
success do you attribute to the work in the grind and how much do you think had to do with being lucky and and being at the right place at the right time?
Yeah, I think very much both. Um
I think you can't
Be overtly risk averse if you're an entrepreneur.
You have to be able to live with
ambiguity and live with stress.
Um
also at the core is having great teams of people. You know, they're the ones that really
Executed and made made these
various companies work and
Yeah, it's it's the people that, you know, I was able to
Be the visionary and
Directly into
opportunities but it's really so many great people that heart and soul
They committed themselves to to make make that happen.
That's Cameron Healy.
Founder of Kettle Foods and co-founder of Kona Brewing Company.
By the way, in the early 2000s, Cameron was looking for a way to make sure that all that oil used to make kettle chips didn't go to waste. So he funded a biodiesel startup in Salem that still exists today. And he did it with another old hippie who's also a vocal advocate for biodiesel fuel.
Willie Nelson.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show.
And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter at guyroz.com or on Substack.
This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtina Eravlui. It was edited by Neeba Grant with research help from Ramel Wood.
Our engineers are Robert Rodriguez and Quasey Lee. Our production staff also includes Catherine Cypher,
Chris Massini, John Isabella, Sam Paulson, Alex Chung.
Carrie Thompson, Nora Gill, and Elaine Coates.
I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening.
How I built this.