Route 11 moves into facility in Mt. Jackson Industrial Park

By Elizabeth Wilkerson -- Daily Staff Writer

MT. JACKSON — As she stood in Route 11 Chips' new 22,000-square-foot plant on Monday, company President Sarah Cohen was surrounded by something not often found at the old plant — open space.

"It was really like going from the garage into a real plant," Cohen said of the company's move from its 7,200-square-foot Middletown location to a site in the Mt. Jackson Industrial Park. "It's insane. It was a grueling experience. ... Every time I come in here, I'm just kind of blown away at how awesome it is."

The relocation is still in progress.

Potato chip production at the new location began about eight weeks ago, she said, though work on its retail and office spaces is still under way. They hope to open the retail area, where customers will be able to watch production of the chips while they shop, in about two weeks, she said.

"We spent all the money we have just to get the production up and running," she said. "We're slowly getting down here."

Production stopped for three weeks during the move, Cohen said. They spent the first five weeks of production in Mt. Jackson trying to catch up on orders, which did not take long, she said. At the Mt. Jackson plant, which was designed specifically to produce Route 11's products, they can make 600 pounds of chips an hour, she said.

"We can produce two times as much product with half the effort" and the same number of employees — 33 — they had in Middletown, she said. "We think that the chips have actually gotten better."

She said she knew the move would be hard, but she also knew "we could do it." Though they initially sought a location closer to Middletown, Cohen said, Mt. Jackson's industrial park is proving to be a perfect fit.

"We love Mt. Jackson," Cohen said. "We're a small business making this huge transition. ... Really, the only thing that came through was Mt. Jackson. They were huge advocates, and it really helped a lot."

But the rising cost of two essential chip ingredients — potatoes and oil — has made the move more challenging, Cohen said. A combination of factors, including farmers choosing to grow corn instead of potatoes and the recent floods in the Midwest, have caused potato prices to triple.

Right now, "there's just a lot of decisions we have to make," she said, though the company is resolved not to switch to cheaper ingredients. For Cohen and her business partner, Mike Connelly, it's important that people are getting what they pay for, she said.

"It is a little bit of a precarious time for us right now," she said, but the company would already be out of business if it were still in its Middletown location. Though she thinks the business is generally "a few steps behind," there's no doubt it will eventually feel the impact of the current national economic conditions, she said.

"I'm scared because of the economy," she said. "We don't know what it's going to mean to us."

But, she added, "the great thing about a potato chip is there's so many places for it," and Route 11 Chips is "still in that comfort zone." And, the company's making a quality product, Connelly said.

"I think there's a lot of garbage out there at designer prices," he said.

Cohen started the business in 1992 during a recession and a sudden craze for fat-free foods. It survived then, she said, and it will survive again.

"I think we're just gonna try to muscle through this period," she said. "We just want to continue to grow the business, and we think we've got a good product."

* Contact Elizabeth Wilkerson at ewilkerson@nvdaily.com