Four generations of Ryan Albright’s family have grown potatoes and other crops in the thick, loamy soil of central New Brunswick. It’s a fact that serves to underscore the success of Covered Bridge Potato Chips, an operation he launched with his brother Matt and cousin Shaun in 2007.

Today, the little company is a dynamo, selling its brand of “old fashioned kettle style potato chips” to retailers throughout the Maritimes and right across Canada. Albright prefers to keep the actual numbers to himself, but he says “growth has gone through the roof” over the past few years, with sales doubling every 12 months.

In 2004, Albright and his brother and cousin established Carleton County Spud Distributors Ltd. to sell their own potatoes and those of other producers. Two years later, the three men acquired the family farm from Ryan’s and Matt’s grandfather Wayne, father Lorne and uncle Robert (Shaun’s father).

Ryan says he was looking at doing different things with the tubers. He even thought about potato vodka. But kettle-style chips intrigued him. “The big guys do it,” Albright once explained. “But it isn’t their main business. Kettle chips come from a different cooking process. You cook them in a big vat of oil in small batches at lower temperatures. It is a very slow process. A kettle chip fryer can do maybe 150-300 pounds an hour, whereas a continuous cooker that the big guys use can do something like 5,000 to 10,000 pounds an hour.”

To ensure consistent quality, the firm uses Russet potatoes, whose high sugar content give the chips a distinctive flavour. And to promote the brand, it makes tremendous use of summer tourism, providing tours to the motor coach trade. “Traffic is up probably about 20-25 per cent this year,” Albright says. We have a few things that we’re trying to do – to add to the premises – but I can’t really say what they are.”

Amongst the changes at Covered Bridge, however, one thing remains cheerfully constant: the steady state of its owner’s entrepreneurial gusto.

By Alec Bruce