Hanover’s Snacking
Traditions Deliver Regional Flavors with Wide Appeal
The small town of Hanover, Pennsylvania,
approximately 50 miles northwest of Baltimore, might seem an unlikely place to
house not just one, but two nationally known snack food companies. But when you consider that, in the early 1900s,
entrepreneurial snack makers from this farming community enjoyed easy access to
locally available crops that made starting one’s own chip or pretzel company a
fairly inexpensive way to get into business, it’s not so unlikely after all.
Today, Snyder’s of Hanover and Utz Quality Foods, founded in 1909 and 1921 respectively,
maintain their Pennsylvania footing yet extend their reach to national and
international markets, giving the Chesapeake region two major hometown snack heroes.
The tradition of baking soft pretzels was brought to Southeastern
Pennsylvania by German immigrants and the country’s first commercial pretzel
bakery was founded in 1861 in Lititz, in Lancaster County. Pretzel lore holds
that a local baker's apprentice once dozed off while baking soft pretzels and
woke in a panic to see that the hearth’s fire had died down. Believing the
pretzels had not been baked long enough, he fired the furnace again, baking
them twice as long. The master baker was furious over the ruined pretzels, but
curiously tasted them anyway. Much to his surprise, they were crisp, crunchy,
and delicious. He also discovered the new hard pretzel retained its freshness
much longer than traditional soft pretzels. And the rest, as they say, is
history.
That history manifested itself in
Snyder’s famous pretzels, when the company, which had been producing pretzels
since 1909, acquired another local bakery, the Bechtel Pretzel Company, in
1963. It was Bill Bechtel who developed the original
recipe for the sourdough hard pretzel that’s still used today.
“Snyder's of Hanover became a
major national snack food company because of the success of
their Sourdough Pretzel,” said Claude O'Connor, Snyder’s vice president of
marketing. “Currently, Snyder's Sourdough Pretzel is No. 1 in the
Baltimore/D.C. region.”
O'Connor adds that “the history of
the company, its family heritage, and the fact that the management is all
focused and located here in Central Pennsylvania helps keep our roots in
perspective.”
What pretzels are to Snyder’s,
potato chips are to Utz Quality Foods.
Bill and Salie Utz started their potato chip business in 1921,
cooking up about 50 pounds of chips per hour behind their Hanover summer house.
The popularity of their Hanover Home Brand chips grew into a business that
today produces 14,000 potato chips per hour, amounting to over a million pounds
of chips per week.
Potato chips remain at the heart of Utz’s success. The company’s Pennsylvania Dutch roots
served its earlier recipes, and Grandma Utz Handcooked Potato Chips taste just like Bill and Salie’s original,
using slightly thicker, un-rinsed potato slices that are kettle-cooked in lard
in small batches. Utz’s snack line has expanded greatly since its beginnings—even to include The
Crab Chip made with Chesapeake Bay crab seasoning.
“One of our biggest markets and
most successful is Baltimore,” says Tom Dempsey, president of Utz Quality Foods. “Many generations have enjoyed steamed
crabs, Utz chips and Natty Boh beer. We thought the flavor would be a winner there in Baltimore, but you’d be
amazed at what a following it has in some of the other geographical areas that
we distribute in.”
Dempsey adds that Hanover is not a
large town, so seeing the Utz name in different
regions and settings all across the United States fosters a sense of pride. All
of Utz’s manufacturing plants are in the Hanover area
and the company has second and third generation employees in its workforce.
The hardworking German immigrants
who founded Hanover had a taste for salty snacks and a strong entrepreneurial
spirit that began a tradition of snacking that remains rooted deep in the
community. Both Snyder’s and Utz are an integral part
of the community, positioning Hanover as a national player in the snack food
industry while still catering to the region’s residents with the crunchy
munchies they crave.
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