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