EEUU: After months of struggling, Sterzing’s ’as close as we’re going to get’ to potato chip that resembles old recipe

For more than eight decades, Iowa-based Sterzing Food Co. has stamped a simple "Tri-Some" slogan on its iconic bags of potato chips.

After months of struggles to adapt to a government-mandated change to its recipe, president Craig Smith is ready for a new spin on that straightforward message.

"How about ’Tri-Some again?’" he said Thursday, chuckling. "Please."

The 20-employee Burlington company announced via its Facebook page that it believes that, at last, it has found an altered recipe that comes as close as the company can —within legal limits — to match the old taste and feel.

"We should probably have done this (particular change in oils) much earlier, but it hadn’t been recommended to us," Smith told the Register. "It’s a higher quality that can interact with the temperature of the cooking process much better. We think there’s a much cleaner, finished taste.

"... We are probably as close as we’re going to get with this particular oil. People will have to decide."

Smith said the company has been put through the emotional wringer since it announced this past May that it had been tinkering with its Sterzing’s Potato Chips formula. It made the move in light of a 2015 U.S. Food and Drug Administration order banning oils that contain trans fats.

Manufacturers had until this past June to comply. Sterzing began that process in March, albeit unwillingly, given the fierce loyalty customers have shown to the original recipe.

At least four "significant adjustments" to the recipe were made in that time, with the company throwing everything from new oils to different blends of potatoes to handfuls of recommendations from food scientists at the problem.

All the while, the comments and feedback have flowed in. Smith said he took the negativity personally. His response mirrored that feeling, as he himself answered as many emails about the changes as he could.

The reasonable ones, anyway.

"I think what we realized is how avid our fans were, and are. It’s a loyal customer base that has loved our product," Smith said. "It’s been such a deep part of their growing up in southeast Iowa, and we knew that but we couldn’t measure it. That was the part that hurt the most. We were disappointing people, and they didn’t know why."

Smith is hopeful the disappointment phase is over. The newest chip has a base oil that hasn’t been used in their tinkering before, and the company is satisfied with the result. He said the company’s own employees have been making considerably more positive comments about the taste.

Now, the real test is left to the customers, who should be looking for chips that have a "sell-by date" of Dec. 14 or later. Smith said those chips should arrive in central Iowa stores within 10 days.

"We’re satisfied, and we’re cautiously optimistic that our customers will enjoy it and reminisce about the original at the same time," he said.

For his part, Smith also said he’s been flummoxed as to why one option for food manufacturers hasn’t been to put cautionary labels on packages of trans-fat chips. Such warnings are made available for tobacco and other potentially harmful products, and he’s been struggling to understand a perceived lack of consistency.

And in spite of this hopeful breakthrough, Smith acknowledged there isn’t a truckload of other recipes to try if the current batch doesn’t meet customers’ standards.

"If there’s still an outcry, we still believe we have a much better product than we had for a while there," he said. "We can start all over again, but we’ll be limited on our options going forward."

So this isn’t quite Sterzing’s Last Stand, if you will, but there’s no going back to the pre-mandate original recipe for the chip that distributes in a roughly 400-mile range from Burlington to stores throughout the state and in Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri and Nebraska.

"We want to continue to make chips and be in production, and right now, we are Iowa’s only potato chip manufacturer. We don’t want to lose that. People have stayed with us, and we’re grateful," Smith said.

"It’s been hard. We couldn’t anticipate how difficult this was going to be."