It all started with a glass of $8 pinot noir and a bag of potato chips.
Tech entrepreneur Jonathan Strietzel was working on a project, got the munchies and took a break. That fateful snack was so satisfying it became his next major business venture: “I went, ‘Oh my gosh, this is soooo delicious together!’”
Strietzel founded winechips.com in 2017, enlisting the help of his family along with experts in tech, branding, seasoning, even master sommeliers. He opened operations and a commercial kitchen in Huntington Beach in 2019, and launched at the LAWineFest in Long Beach. Now he’s got $1 million in online orders and his product is carried in 600 shops nationally, offering a cheese line with flavors such as Manchego to pair with rosé; blue (sauvignon blanc), smoked gouda (cabernet) and Asiago (pinot grigio).
Q: What do your tech buddies think of you going into the potato chip biz?
A: All my friends were like, “You’ve been successful at tech. What are you doing? Are you really going to drop everything and go do this?” I had pictures of myself with my family, with a hairnet on and an apron at a fryer. It just went viral among our executive friends. “Jonathan has fallen off the boat!”
Q: Remember what they say: How do you make $1 million in wine? Start with $3 million.
A: Absolutely. I knew there was a big idea here that was being overlooked by everyone. And so I knew I had to push through.
Q: You had already roped your girlfriend and your family into working nights and weekends. How did you get the experts on board?
A: One of my best friends is Sara Rotman. She owned a branding agency on Madison Avenue called ModCo. She is the woman who designed the Tory Burch logo, and they ended up doing branding contracts with Vera Wang, Nina Ricci, Carolina Herrera, everybody.
She sold that agency, made a ton of money and moved to Santa Barbara. We had developed a relationship like brother-sister, two peas in a pod. I went to her and said, “Sara, I think we should make the world’s best potato chips.” And she looked at me — and I don’t even want to tell you the verbiage she used, being a New Yorker, but she basically told me to go screw myself.
Q: I don’t think they eat a lot of Ruffles in Montecito…
A: But after a little bit of convincing and exposing her to what I saw in terms of the opportunity, she got quiet on the phone for probably five minutes. It felt like an eternity, I said, “Are you there?” She’s like, “I’m thinking.” And then finally she went, “I never thought in my life I would ever say this, but let’s make some potato chips.”
Q: Then you pulled in master somms. What’s their role?
A: If we want to be the No. 1 wine snack in the world, we have to have the best people at wine pairing and service.
Q: So tell me about the chip. It’s lattice cut and … thicker than a kettle chip?
A: We made a very conscious decision at the beginning that a woman should be able to hold a wine chip in her hand and eat it in a single bite. So we source and cut all of our potatoes to that spec. And we wanted crunchiness, we wanted it to pop, we wanted it to be hefty. We didn’t want it to crumble in your mouth.
Q: What about the flavors?
A: They’re extremely flavorful, but you’re pairing: It works together instead of the wine overpowering the chip. We’re tasting a lot to determine that balance, that this Manchego chip’s got enough flavor so the rosé doesn’t dominate the chip.
We have our normal line, which is our cheese line. And then we have our research and development lines. We build flavors — like Thai Lemongrass, Dry-aged Ribeye, Hawaiian Red Sea Salt, Spicy Calabrese, Sweet Coconut Curry. We do pairings and we try them, and if they’re popular enough, we’ll graduate them (to the regular lines).
Details: Wine Chips offers starter kits ($19.99 for three 3-ounce bags), gift sets and more at winechips.com.
The Link LonkFebruary 12, 2021 at 03:58AM
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How a snack attack led to Wine Chips and $1 million in online orders - The Mercury News
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