Chips All In

Downey’s Potato Chips in Waterford Township is methodically expanding from a local delicacy to a statewide staple.

BY TIM KEENAN | JOSH SCOTT

Downey’s Potato Chips in Waterford Township has made great strides since its humble beginnings in the Waterfall Plaza strip mall in 1984.

Back then, the hand-crafted kettle-fried chips were sold to local clients the day they were made. They were packaged in individual resealable bags and sold while the day’s supplies lasted. Now, from a 5,000-square-foot operation a couple of miles down Highland Road (M-59) from the original store, Downey’s produces 3,000 bags of chips per week and delivers to 228 stores in southeast Michigan.

Rosemary Downey Hogarth and her family founded the company, which eventually outgrew the strip mall space and moved to its current location.

In 2012, the Hogarth family sold Downey’s to Waterford Township’s Bagley Land Holdings Building and Development Corp., owned by Patrick J. Bagley. He’s also co-founder of Bagley & Langan, a general law practice in the township.

Under Bagley’s ownership, Downey’s continued mild growth until the FDA, in June 2018, required that all processed and packaged foods in the United States remove partially hydrogenated oils from their ingredients, citing the move would prevent thousands of heart attacks and deaths each year. As Downey’s changed its recipe, some customers found the new chips lacking in flavor, and sales slipped.

Looking to spark a turnaround, Downey’s tested multiple different oils and combinations and finally landed on sunflower oil, which is healthier and of higher quality than the ingredients it replaced.

Soon after, Bagley’s daughter, Kali, graduated from Michigan State University and, after testing the waters of public relations, she decided she’d rather join the family business.

“As I was getting my feet wet in PR, I came to realize it wasn’t my passion,” Kali Bagley says. “I never thought potato chips would become my passion, but I love this job and I love this company. It’s invigorating and challenging to run a small business. I love what we stand for. I love our connection with customers and our devotion to incredibly high-quality products.”

Kali Bagley, general manager of Downey’s Potato Chips in Waterford Township, relaxes in the company’s root room, where Michigan-grown potatoes begin their journey to become potato chips.

Kali Bagley started as a social media manager in 2019, but soon took on more and more responsibility, eventually becoming general manager.

“When I got here, I realized we could be doing so much more with this business,” she says. “We did a rebrand in 2021 to really try to relate to customers what our values are — hand-crafted, family owned and operated, transparent. That came from the Downey’s. We kept the name because there’s so much community support and brand awareness in this area. We want to embrace their legacy.”

Part of the Downeys legacy is the end product: a gourmet potato chip that looks like a standard chip but is solid enough to hold its own in the dip bowl. The company currently produces four core chip flavors: Original Sea Salt (which accounts for more than 50 percent of total sales), Sea Salt and Vinegar, Barbeque, and No Salt.

“It took a lot of fine-tuning to get the chips just right,” Kali says. “It was a process. We have an inertial slicer whose blade must be set at a specific width. When I first got here, we were still trying to make that perfect width of a chip. Not too crunchy, not too thick, but also not too light and flimsy where it would just break.”

The production of Downey’s Potato Chips starts with the main ingredient — Michigan-grown potatoes. “Getting the perfect chipping potato, with none of the defects, light skin, good gravity (potato mass to water), is incredibly challenging,” Kali explains.

Downey’s sources its potatoes from Walther Farms, a third-generation, family-owned business in Three Rivers, south of Kalamazoo. The farm produces more than 18,000 acres of commercial and seed potatoes for both the potato chip and fresh produce markets. It also has 150 employees, as well as operations in southern Indiana, the Nebraska panhandle, southern Texas, western Oklahoma, western Kansas, southwest Georgia, and western South Carolina. Seed operations are conducted in northern Michigan.

Once the potatoes arrive at Downey’s, they’re placed on a conveyor that sends the spuds into an automated peeler/washer. Peeler operators inspect the peeled potatoes and remove any that could make an undesirable chip. From there the potatoes hit the slicer and are automatically put into the fryer at 300 degrees for four to five minutes.

“While the chips are frying, they’re being watched the whole time,” Kali says. “They get turned over by a worker with a food-quality rake, and the frying is complete when the worker thinks the chips look done.”