Kettle Chips: how a small Oregon brand conquered the UK first

Executive overview

Cameron Healy built a $300 million natural snack brand by ignoring the conventional playbook — expanding to the UK before the US East Coast. The UK's dense, crisp-obsessed population proved a better launchpad than a slow domestic rollout. Word of mouth, zero marketing spend, and a celebrity photo of Princess Di with a bag did more than any campaign.

The counterintuitive bet: go where the culture is ready, not where the map is close.

From nuts to chips: the origin

• Cameron ran a natural foods distribution business in Salem, Oregon, in the mid-1970s before being pushed out of a communal business venture
• Restarted solo with a $10,000 loan, roasting bulk nuts and eventually speculating on peanut contracts to capitalise the business
• A 1982 visit to the Maui Chip Company revealed the key insight: its "Hawaiian" potatoes actually came from Klamath Falls, Oregon
• Original name was Pot Chips; renamed Kettle Chips after universal pushback
• Production started at night using existing nut fryers — 40 cases per shift, all by hand

The rancid oil crisis

• Early 1983: Safeway Northern California ordered at scale, forcing a second production shift
• The extra shift disrupted fryer oil management, causing rancidity — Safeway rejected the entire truckload
• Cameron was at the airport departing for India when he got the call; he went anyway
• Plant shut down, demand evaporated, large loans outstanding — the nut business kept Kettle alive
• A near-fatal car accident on the way back from a trade show jolted Cameron out of depression and refocused him

The UK expansion

• 1987 motorcycle trip to Europe with his son sparked interest in the UK crisp market
• British snack culture — pub crisps, dense urban population, word-of-mouth potential — felt like a natural fit
• 1989 launch: free product in three London train station convenience stores sold out and validated demand
• No marketing budget; relied entirely on consumer discovery
• Orders went quiet for months after the initial push; Cameron had "bet the farm" on UK factory loans
• June 1989: orders suddenly flooded in; all five major supermarket chains called in the same week
• UK sales quickly overtook US sales; Princess Di photographed with a bag; Ruby Wax ate them on TV unpaid
• Tim Meyer (Salem-born London banker) pushed a premium price point, accelerating profitability
• The UK operation became a training ground for the more sophisticated sales approach later used in the US

Kona Brewing and parallel ventures

• 1993 Hawaii trip sparked the idea for a local craft beer brand; no beer was being brewed in Hawaii at the time
• Launched with his son Spoon in 1995; lost ~$20,000 a month for several years
• Turned profitable in January 1999 after moving bottling to a mainland contract producer
• Cameron was simultaneously overseeing Kettle operations in Oregon and the UK — balanced by daily yoga and meditation

The exit

• By early 2000s, Kettle Foods was doing ~$100 million in sales with Cameron and Tim Meyer as co-CEOs
• 2004: sold one-third to Catterton Partners private equity to professionalise governance
• 2006: Lion Capital acquired Kettle Foods for over $300 million (Cameron and Tim still held 67%)
• Lion Capital later sold for over $600 million in 2010; the brand passed through Diamond Foods and Snyder's Lance before Campbell's acquired Snyder's Lance for ~$5 billion
• Cameron walked away at the 2006 sale after one management call under the new operator

Lessons on risk and team

• Long odds require naivety: knowing the full difficulty upfront would prevent most good bets
• The nut business as a profitable base gave Kettle the runway to survive the early chip disasters
• Teams executed the vision; Cameron's role was identifying opportunities and tolerating ambiguity
• Cameron's foundation (~$75–80 million endowment) is spending down entirely by 2029, accelerating its environmental and social impact work