Kettle Chips: Cameron Healy. The Wild Bet That Made a Brand

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Mar 2, 2026

Cameron Healy, entrepreneur who built Kettle Chips from a $10K start and later co-founded Kona Brewing. He talks about learning to fry perfect kettle chips by trial and error. He explains the bold move to launch in the UK before the U.S. and how that sparked global growth. He also describes rescuing a losing brewery by shifting production and scaling the business for sale.

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ANECDOTE

Hawaii Visit Sparked The Kettle Chip Idea

Cameron visited the Maui Potato Chip Company and discovered its potatoes came from Klamath Falls, Oregon, which sparked the idea he could make similar chips locally.
He used that realization plus his existing nut-roasting equipment know-how to prototype kettle-cooked chips in Salem in 1982.

INSIGHT

Temperature Swings Create Kettle Crunch

Hand-fed frying and oil-temperature variation creates the distinctive extra crunch of kettle-cooked chips.
Cameron learned temperature swings mattered; small vats and manual feeding produced the caramelization and texture he wanted.

ANECDOTE

Safeway Rejection Nearly Sank The Company

A rushed scale-up to a second shift caused fryer oil to degrade and Safeway rejected a truck for rancid chips, collapsing immediate demand.
The nut business' profits kept the company afloat while they shut down, fixed oil control, and recovered.

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Kettle Chips: Cameron Healy. The Wild Bet That Made a Brand

Most founders expand the “right” way: local → regional → national → international.

Cameron Healy totally skipped the “national” part.

When Kettle Chips was still an upstart regional brand, Cameron made a move that seems almost reckless: he launched his thick-cut, kettle-cooked chips to the United Kingdom — one of the most competitive “crisps” markets on earth — before conquering the U.S.

And that wasn’t his first risky move.

Before Kettle, Cameron was a turban-wearing Sikh entrepreneur in 1970s Salem, Oregon, building a natural foods business…until he was abruptly fired. He started again from scratch with a $10,000 bank loan. Inspired by the extra thick, crunchy potato chips that he sampled on a trip to Hawaii, he taught himself how to fry sliced potatoes through trial-and-error.

Then, just as Kettle started taking off overseas, another trip to Hawaii sparked a second act: Kona Brewing — a craft beer brand that initially lost $20K a month — for years — before Cameron was able to make it work.

Meanwhile, buoyed by its UK success, Kettle chips eventually spread across the US, becoming the top-selling natural chip in the country.

What you’ll learn

The hidden details (like cooking-oil quality control) that can make or break a chip
How curiosity about British “crisp” culture fueled a risky UK rollout
The decision that turned Kona Brewing from a money pit into a scalable brand

Timestamps

07:21 — “You had to get up at 3 a.m.”: building a life in a Sikh community in Salem
10:11 — Fired with four kids and no severance: the moment Cameron is forced to rebuild
12:04 — The $10K loan (helped along by the offer of ski passes)
14:06 — The 1980 peanut crop gamble that suddenly capitalized Cameron’s business
23:14 — “Pot Chips” was the original name…until friends told him how bad it was
24:48 — Hand-feeding potatoes into vats of oil: inventing a process with zero playbook
29:10 — The Safeway disaster: rancid oil, a rejected order, and demand evaporating overnight
31:52 — The car crash that jolted Cameron out of despair
46:35 — UK word-of-mouth “switches on”--with an extra boost from Lady Di
56:03 — Kona Brewing bleeds money…until one decision turns things around

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This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Rommel Wood. Our engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Kwesi Lee.

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