Made in Milwaukee: Muskego-based Jackson’s bringing sweet potato chips to the masses

By Ashley Smart

Apr 15, 2024 7:44 pm

These chips have just made their way through the kettle fryers.

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Jackson's Chips James Marino

Last updated May 2, 2024 7:48 pm

Jackson’s Chips S64 W15569 Commerce Center Parkway, Muskego INDUSTRY: Food manufacturing EMPLOYEES: Approximately 70 jacksonschips.com A Muskego manufacturer housed in an unassuming grey industrial building, tucked behind a Walmart store, is churning out thousands of pounds of sweet potato chips every day. Jackson’s Chips was started as a family business by Scott and Megan Reamer

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Jackson’s Chips S64 W15569 Commerce Center Parkway, Muskego INDUSTRY: Food manufacturing EMPLOYEES: Approximately 70 jacksonschips.com A Muskego manufacturer housed in an unassuming grey industrial building, tucked behind a Walmart store, is churning out thousands of pounds of sweet potato chips every day. Jackson’s Chips was started as a family business by Scott and Megan Reamer of Colorado, who began making sweet potato chips in their kitchen as a way to create a snack their entire family could enjoy, especially their son Jackson who required a restrictive, low-inflammation diet due to a rare auto-immune disorder. In 2017, the couple appeared on the hit ABC show “Shark Tank” and gained a $1.25 million investment from panelist and entrepreneur Rohan Oza. Every day, 200,000 pounds of sweet potatoes arrive at the Jackson’s facility, located at S64 W15569 Commerce Center Parkway, in white super sacks. By the end of the day, those sweet potatoes – sourced from farmers in Arkansas, northern Mississippi and Alabama – will leave the building as 60,000 pounds of bagged chips. “We’re currently getting in about five truckloads a day of raw potatoes,” said James Marino, chief executive officer of Jackson’s. “We’re the only brand and manufacturer solely dedicated to sweet potatoes and avocado oil.” A typical potato chip maker is used to dealing with perfectly rounded potatoes that are about the size of a softball. The challenge in dealing with sweet potatoes is their irregular shape and much larger size. “We try to control the potatoes to be on the small side, but they can get as big as eggplants,” said Marino. Once the potatoes enter the building, they make their way through a washing station. While the potatoes already arrive in their super sacks washed and sorted, Marino said passing them through a bath of sorts is part of the front-end conveyance process. [caption id="attachment_589634" align="alignnone" width="1280"]

A worker grabs freshly packaged Jackson’s chips off the production line.

A worker grabs freshly packaged Jackson’s chips off the production line.[/caption] “We don’t feel like the bath is necessary, but it happens anyway,” he said. “It’s just how the equipment was built.” After moving through the bath, the sweet potatoes are moved through slicing equipment. That equipment can slice 200 pounds of potatoes in a matter of seconds. From there, they are transported to the frying room. Jackson’s uses five large-scale kettle fryers to cook all of its sweet potato chips in avocado oil. The sliced potatoes generally cook between six and seven minutes. “Kettles are small-batch fryers. The process is kind of like an inverted bell curve,” said Marino. “It starts at a certain temperature, what we call zone one. Then, the temperature dips down into zone two. Then it rises back up to its entrance temperature at the end of zone three.” Once cooked, the chips head to a different room to be seasoned with one of Jackson’s many flavors, whether that be traditional sea salt or a more modern flavor like spicy jalapeño or farmhouse ranch. The chips are then sent off to be packaged. Demand for Jackson’s sweet potato chips has exploded, and the company has had to add both space and equipment to keep up. Last fall, Jackson’s added 10,000 square feet of space, two new kettles and two new packaging lines. The company also added 27,000 square feet of warehousing space to store its products, three times the size of its original warehouse space. When the company is ready to grow again, Marino said there’s room for two more production lines within the current facility. A timeline for that expansion has yet to be announced. While Jackson’s products do have a physical presence in big-box retailers like Costco and Festival Foods, the company is looking for alternative ways to get in front of consumers. That might include places like airports, pharmacies and local coffee shops. “It’s not just about being in retail environments,” said Marino. “The cool thing about snacks and chips is if you look around, they’re sold everywhere.”