Utz: You’re Dead to Utz

The connection between Utz potato chips and Baltimore is legend. Yes, as many a would-be smarty parts will tell you, they’re manufactured over the border in Hanover, PA, but Baltimore was the first major market to embrace the Utz brand, founded by Will and Salie Utz in 1921. As Wikipedia tells us, “After Salie cooked the chips, Bill delivered them to local grocery stores and farmers’ markets in the Hanover and Baltimore, Maryland areas.” For years thereafter, our own Lexington Market was the primary distribution point for Utz products. Utz embraced its Baltimore connection with its Old Bay-seasoned “Crab Chips.” Utz even made a cameo on The Wire! We owned you, Utz!

Well, not anymore. Consider yourself disowned. Feel free to hangout with your soulless Yankee friends and all their bought-and-paid-for championships. But remember this Utz: New York doesn’t care about you. You may have made some Miltonian deal to become the “Official Snack Food of the New York Yankees,” but New Yorkers will never claim you the way we have. To them, you’re just a second-rate Dorito. And now, that’s all you’ll ever be.

– By Evan Serpick