INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business

INNOVATOR
PHOTO BY TRACIE MORRIS SCHAEFER
Zapp’s Potato Chips president Ron Zappe created Purify as a way to save money and recycle frying oil to create his snacks.
Zapp’s Potato Chips
Key innovation: a chemical powder that can purify
and extend the life of cooking oil
Biggest clients: Kroger grocery stores, Premium
Snacks food manufacturers
Where they’re based: Gramercy
Top executive: Ron Zappe, president
Year introduced: 1995
2007 sales: “A whole bunch of potato chips.”
FOUNDED AS A SMALL operation in 1985, Zapp’s Potato
Chips has grown to become a major snack food manufacturer.
With 11 different flavors and fans all over the world,
the Gramercy-based company produces more than 100,000
bags of chips per day.
Zapp’s president Ron Zappe confirmed that necessity
is the mother of all invention when he searched for a way
to minimize his cooking oil costs back in 1994. Having to
reload the fryers with more than 30,000 pounds of new
oil every 15 days, oil was growing to be a major expense.
With the help of chemical engineers and through experimentation,
Zappe sought out a way to purify his own oil
without having to replace it.
Despite the fact they would ultimately use less oil,
their supplier LouAna Foods offered up the assistance of
its lab personnel. The end result was a proprietary powder
covered by four patents that absorbs all the impurities
in the oil through polar attraction. The powder is put
into the peanut oil and after circulating for a half-hour, it
absorbs all the crumbs which are then removed with a filtration
system.
“We haven’t thrown away any oil since 1994, and it’s
essentially new every morning,” Zappe said.
Realizing his new discovery could benefit other food
manufacturers, Zappe named the product Purifry and created
Louisiana Chemical Co. in 1995. The product is being
used by a number of food manufacturers such as Premium
Snacks in Oxnard, Calif., a company that was replacing
about $10,000 worth of oil every three weeks before using
Purify, said General Manager Kevin Holden.
“We started using it in 2003 and haven’t thrown away
any oil in a couple of years. I don’t know if we’d even be
here if it wasn’t for Purifry. We’re a small company and
$10,000 every three weeks is huge,” Holden said.
Zappe said that until recently, he hasn’t put much
effort into marketing Purifry. Focusing more on his potato
chip business, he said that only recently with the
increasing price of oil has he begun to put more energy
into the product. Zappe is now working on a cost-effective
restaurant version of the product and hopes to have it
on the market soon.
“There are some people using the product, but we
really don’t try too hard to sell it. We’re in the potato chip
business. Oil costs have doubled in the past year so I’m
becoming more popular.”•
— Craig Guillot
34A 2008 Innovator of the Year