It’s Official! Inventure Foods Changes to UTZ Quality Foods
The Wells County Chamber of Commerce staff and Ambassadors held a Ribbon Cutting on Tuesday, November 12 to officially transition the name from Inventure Foods to UTZ Quality Foods. Members from the corporate office, located in Hanover Pennsylvania were present for the celebration.
The Utz story began in Hanover, Pennsylvania, in a small-town kitchen. It was 1921. William (Bill) and Salie Utz thought potato chips could be better.
Using hand operated equipment, William and Salie Utz initially produced 50 pounds of potato chips per day from their home. Salie cooked potato chips, while Bill delivered the freshly made chips to small grocers and other markets across central Pennsylvania.
To capture the spirit of this new venture, an image of a youthful yet mischievous girl, the “Little Utz Girl”, was printed on the front of every package. The “Little Utz Girl” stood as the embodiment of all things honest and good, as she still does to this day.
Understanding and responding to these changes, Utz Quality Foods began to acquire other diverse and regional snack food brands such as: Wachusett®, Zapp’s® and Dirty® Potato Chips (2011), Bachman® and Jax® (2012), Good Health® (2014), Snikiddy® (2015), Golden Flake® (2016) and most recently, Boulder Canyon® (2017). These brands offer Utz the ability to satisfy demand for an even broader range of customer tastes in wider geographic areas.
As a means to further excite and inspire customers around their brands, Utz became a much more active sponsorship partner with numerous organizations during this period recently becoming the “Official Salty Snack” of Major League Baseball. The Utz and Major League Baseball partnership is a winning combination as each places a great deal of emphasis on quality, family and tradition.
Almost 100 years after its inception, Utz Quality Foods is still a family-managed business operating in the heart of Pennsylvania, the snack food capital of the world.
Each day, the Utz team works to honor the “Little Utz Girl’s” youthful spirt and century of heritage by crafting world-class snacks, which continue to put smiles on the faces of generations.
“We were excited to add this plant as one of the 13 plants currently owned and operated by Utz,” said Tom Flocco, President and Chief Operating Officer of Utz. “We are impressed with the experience and dedication of the workforce as well as the productivity of the equipment. Bluffton is also well located for some of our expansion markets as Utz continues to expand into new geographies. Our long-term operations strategy includes investing in the Bluffton plant for years to come.”
About Utz Quality Foods, LLC
Founded in 1921, Utz Quality Foods, LLC. is the largest family‐managed, privately held, salty snack company in the United States, producing a full line of products including potato chips, pretzels, cheese snacks, corn chips, tortillas, veggie stix/straws, popcorn, onion rings, pork skins and more. Its brands, which include Utz®, Golden Flake®, Zapp’s®, Dirty® Potato Chips, Good Health®, Bachman®, Bachman Jax®, Wachusett®, Snikiddy®, Boulder Canyon®, Snyder of Berlin®, Tim’s Cascade®, and Hawaiian Brand® among others, are distributed nationally and internationally through grocery, mass merchant, club stores, convenience stores, drug stores and other channels. Based in Hanover, Pennsylvania, Utz operates thirteen manufacturing facilities located in Pennsylvania, Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Washington, and Massachusetts as well as 1,700+ DSD routes.
For information about Utz® or its products, please visit www.utzsnacks.com or call 1‐800‐FOR‐SNAX.