Potato Chip Entrepreneur Dies at 96

C H I C A G O, Aug. 26, 2000 -- One of the principle men behind the modern, corn oil-fried potato chip, hasdied.

Leonard Japp Sr. was 96.

Japp founded Jays Foods, whose slogan is “Can’t stop eating’em.” The company rose to success because Japp couldn’t stopthinking about ’em.

“It was my baby,” Japp said in a 1994 interview with theChicago Tribune.

He saw his company grow from a two-person operation deliveringnuts and pretzels to Al Capone’s speakeasies in 1927 to a businessthat currently employs 1,000 people and sells snacks in Illinois,Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota and Iowa.

According to the company’s Web site, Jays Foods was one of the first companies to use the continuous fryer, which makes lighter, less oily chips than earlier methods.

Japp grew up in Wells, Minn. He left home at age 12 to work thegrain harvests in the Plains and was 17 when he hopped a freighttrain to Chicago in 1921. He worked as many as four jobs at a timefor the next few years.

In 1927, Japp and a friend put $5 down on an old Ford deliverytruck and managed to buy $22.50 worth of nuts and pretzels. Theyquickly parlayed that $27.50 investment into a snack deliverybusiness that soon included a fleet of delivery trucks and newfrying vats, all paid for with cash.

But the 1929 stock market crash swept away the growing company.

Japp and a new partner managed to rebuild the business, thenknown as Special Foods Co., by the mid-1930s. But thecompany’s leading house brand, “Mrs. Japp’s Chips,” fell victim to anti-Japanese sentiment after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941and disappeared from grocery store shelves.

‘He Earned All Our Love’

Japp quickly changed the company’s name to Jays Foods and builta manufacturing plant on Chicago’s South Side.

“He always stopped to talk,” said Ronald Young, a maintenanceworker there for 15 years. “He didn’t think he was better, andthat just blew our minds. He earned all our love that way.”

During World War II, Jays used their bags to publish recipes, such as potato chip tuna casserole, as a way to help families stretch their food budgets.

During the 1960s, Japp accepted a request from President Kennedy to lead a delegation to the U.S.S.R. to set up potato chip plants.

Jays grew to $64 million in annual sales by 1986 and the familysold the company to Borden Inc. But by 1994, Jays was losing $17million a year, prompting the family and other investors to buy itback.

“He was 91 when we started thinking about buying again, but thelife just leaped back into him when he found out,” Japp’s grandsonsaid. “When he first sold it, he lost some of his spirit.”

Japp died Thursday at his home in suburban Oakbrook Terrace. Heis survived by his grandson, Steven; his third wife, Janice; astepdaughter, Sara Koenig; five other grandchildren; twostepgrandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren. The Associated Press contributed to this report.