This Snack Maker’s Secret To Success: Doing It Himself

Contract manufacturing is a backbone of the U.S. industrial economy, given how many auto suppliers, electronics fabricators and consumer-goods companies depend on paying someone else to make their stuff.

But Jason Wright couldn’t go in that direction with a patented new product he’d concocted that has upended a significant corner of the U.S. food business: chicken-based snack chips that challenge the conventional behemoth of the savory snack category—potato chips. His “secret sauce” for formulating and manufacturing the product was so important that he couldn’t risk losing that intellectual property to potential competitors.

“There was a lot of trial and error,” Wright says. “There’s no formula or a way to do it. I was just so desperate to bring this product to market and believed in it so much that I just kept going.”

As a result, his better-for-you Wilde Protein Chips have become a $50-million-a-year business in just five years. And a few years ago, Wright decided to build a 55,000-square-foot plant in Lexington, Kentucky, where he’s planning to take the brand to the next level. Now in 20,000 storefronts ranging from Whole Foods to Target stores, Wright is beginning to supply Costco Warehouse Stores with Wilde chips as well.

Wright was a childhood fan of potato chips and is a former fashion model who launched a regional granola bran, Feed Granola, in New York City in 2005, peddling his line to bodegas, Korean markets and other mom-and-pop stores in Manhattan. He grew it to $5 million in annual sales before shutting it down. “Everyone has their own take on granola,” he says. “There’s no secret sauce.”

Encouraged by his success as an entrepreneur, Wright believed he could come up with a unique better-for-you product where he could concoct a “secret sauce” that would set it apart. He was living in Austin, Texas, a haven for food entrepreneurs, and chips came to mind. Wright moved to Boulder, Colorado, another foodie heaven, and began working with scientists at nearby Colorado State University to develop his idea.

The concept of meat-based chips isn’t novel; Americans have eaten pork rinds, pieces of crispy pig skin, for decades, for instance. But Wright’s approach was different. “My idea was to replace potato with chicken breast,” he explains. “It sounds simple, but it’s not. We would start with fresh chicken breast, slice it really thin, do a low, slow roast to drive out the moisture in the chicken, and then sauté it to make it extra crispy. I wanted to bring that concept to market.”

Here are some lessons from Wright’s drive to move Wilde from its early days to its current status as a burgeoning mid-market brand:

Gather loyal support. In the foodie-based environment of Boulder, Colorado, where Wright developed Wilde chips, he also found encouragement and financial support from people including private-equity player Allan Karp and his KarpReilly firm. “There were a few folks who really believed in what I was doing and supported me financially,” he says. “Without them, I wouldn’t be here.”

Recently, to boot, KarpReilly was among investors that put an additional $20 million into Wilde Chips to help fund its expansion.

Protect your property. For Wright, it was apparent early on that contract manufacturing was not going to work for Wilde chips. The formula and the required design of processing equipment were too unusual, and of proprietary importance. Plus, he worried about IP leakiness at contract manufacturers.

Existing snack-chip brands such as Frito-Lay might covet a healthy-chip innovation. And, Wright said, meat companies such as Tyson, and jerky maker Jack Links “could see what I was doing and understand how I was doing it. I figured out I had to make my own equipment.”

Persist and then persist some more. “I’ve been told and heard about many brands out there trying to do something similar and going into it with a lot of confidence but coming out the other end saying [we] have something unique, and they can’t figure it out,” Wright says. “It’s a credit to our team and not wanting to take no for an answer. It’s not an easy road, and it took a lot of failure to get here.”

Tap into government help. Kentucky government chipped in “with tax credits and some startup support” to help Wilde complete its factory, which now employs about 100 people and is being outfitted with new custom equipment that “will take our quality to the next level when we turn it on January 26,” Wright says. “It will involve a lot more automation and consistency and higher-tech equipment.”