The Strange Decision That Turned Kettle Chips Into a $300M Brand
Guy Raz Newsletter – March 6, 2026
Most food brands scale in a pretty predictable way.
They start local. Then regional. Then national. And only after years of building distribution, awareness, and capital do they begin to think internationally.
Cameron Healy did almost the exact opposite.
When Kettle Chips was still a small, scrappy brand out of Salem, Oregon, he made a move that sounded borderline absurd: he took it to the UK.
Not New York. Not Chicago. Not Florida. Britain.
A country with a fierce crisp culture, a crowded snack market, and consumers with deeply entrenched tastes.
And yet he was right.
Kettle Chips broke through there in a huge way, eventually becoming a major brand in the UK before it fully became one in the United States.
But that is only part of what makes Cameron’s story so interesting.
Before Kettle, he was living in a Sikh community, getting up at 3 a.m. for yoga and meditation, building natural food businesses out of necessity, and trying to hold together a vision of communal idealism and economic survival. Later, while building Kettle, he would also launch Kona Brewing, commuting in effect between Oregon, Hawaii, and the UK, while somehow keeping all three plates spinning.
What struck me most about Cameron was not just his appetite for risk. It was his combination of intuition, resilience, and calm. He made some wildly unconventional bets, but he never came across as reckless. He seemed centered. Even serene. That may be the most unusual founder quality of all.
Here are five lessons that stayed with me after our conversation.
1. Sometimes the smartest growth move looks irrational at first
On paper, Cameron’s decision to expand Kettle Chips into the UK made very little sense.
He had a small regional brand in Oregon. America was enormous. There were countless untapped markets right in front of him. And instead of pushing east across the U.S., he jumped over the Atlantic.
That sounds like bad strategy.
But Cameron saw something others didn’t. He noticed that Britain already had a deep potato chip culture, but not one that looked or tasted like Kettle. He sensed that a premium, crunchy, rustic chip could feel new there. He also felt that broader cultural shifts around natural foods and lifestyle were just beginning to take hold in the UK.
He was early, maybe naively early. But often that is the point. Founders who wait for perfect certainty usually arrive after the opportunity is obvious to everyone else.
The lesson here is not to be random. It is to recognize that good entrepreneurs sometimes spot asymmetry where others see only distance. A move can look illogical from the outside and still be exactly right.
2. A great brand does not begin with scale. It begins with distinctiveness
What Cameron understood early was that he did not just need a snack product. He needed something with character.
Kettle Chips were thicker, darker, crunchier, less uniform, more flavorful. They felt handmade in a category dominated by chips that were thinner, flatter, and more industrial. Even the imperfections became part of the appeal. The product told a story before the company had the money to tell one in ads.
That matters.
When you are small, you cannot outspend incumbents. You cannot out-distribute them. You usually cannot out-manufacture them either.
But you can be unmistakable.
Kettle stood out on the shelf. It stood out in the mouth. It stood out in the memory. And once people tried it, they talked about it.
A lot of founders obsess over distribution too early and distinctiveness too late. Cameron seemed to understand that if the product felt special enough, it could generate its own mystique. That is exactly what happened, first in pockets of the U.S., then explosively in the UK.
3. Trial and error is not a phase. It is the job
One of the most revealing parts of Cameron’s story is how primitive the early chip-making process was.
They were slicing potatoes directly into vats of hot oil, by hand, at night, after using the same factory during the day for nuts. There was no playbook. No internet tutorial. No consultant who could tell him how to make a premium kettle chip at scale. They had to learn by doing, and by messing up.
And mess up they did.
After expanding production and landing a major Safeway order, they shipped product that turned rancid because they did not yet understand how fryer oil degraded at larger scale. The order was rejected. Other customers complained. Demand collapsed. The plant shut down. The company was suddenly in real trouble.
That is the kind of moment that kills a lot of businesses.
But Cameron and his team treated the problem as information, not as a verdict. They got more scientific. They figured out oil management. They improved the product. And gradually customers came back.
There is a fantasy version of entrepreneurship where insight arrives, execution follows, and scale happens in a neat upward line.
The real version is uglier and more useful. You make something. You break something. You fix it. You learn. Then you do it again.
4. Teams matter even more when the founder is a visionary
Cameron is clearly an ideas person. He says that himself. He was always seeing the next move, the next category, the next opening.
That can be a superpower. It can also create chaos unless the right people are around you.
Again and again in our conversation, he came back to the people around him. The employees who helped solve manufacturing problems. The operators who helped him build in the UK. The teams in Oregon and England who gave him the freedom to start Kona Brewing while Kettle was still growing. The finance-minded partner in Britain who pushed for more premium pricing than Cameron would have chosen himself.
In other words, Cameron was not successful because he did everything. He was successful because he found people who could complement him.
This is such an important distinction. Founders love to talk about vision. And vision matters. But vision without operational ballast can sink a company.
The best founders are often not the ones who can do every job. They are the ones who know what kind of people need to be in the room so the company can survive the founder’s own instincts.
5. Calm is a competitive advantage
This may be the lesson that stayed with me most.
Cameron went through being pushed out of the communal businesses he helped build. He started over with four kids and no income. He risked the company on chips. He nearly lost the business after a quality failure. He bet heavily on the UK. He launched a brewery in Hawaii while already running a growing snack company. For years, Kona Brewing lost money. By any normal measure, this was a very stressful life.
And yet he never sounded frantic.
Part of that, I think, comes from his years of yoga and meditation. Part of it is probably just temperament. But whatever the source, it was striking. Cameron seemed able to absorb uncertainty without being consumed by it.
That is not softness. That is strength.
A lot of founders mistake intensity for effectiveness. They think panic is proof of commitment. But composure helps you see more clearly. It helps teams trust you. It helps you distinguish between a catastrophe and a hard problem.
Cameron had plenty of hard problems. What he seemed to avoid was letting those problems colonize his mind.
That might be one reason he was able to keep seeing around corners.
Cameron Healy’s story is not just about chips or beer. It is about what can happen when an entrepreneur combines unconventional instinct with patience, grit, and enough inner steadiness to survive his own ambition.
He made bets that looked strange. Some of them blew up. Some of them changed his life.
And in the end, maybe that is the deeper lesson.
Not every crazy idea is brilliant. But almost every breakthrough looks a little crazy in the beginning.
P.S. If you loved the episode, follow the show in your podcast app so you never miss one. And please SHARE this newsletter so others can learn from some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs!
On HIBT This Week!
Kettle Chips: From a Commune in Oregon to a $300 Million Brand
In the early 1970s, Cameron Healy was living communally as a Sikh in Salem, Oregon: turbans, 3 a.m. wake-ups, and two and a half hours of group yoga before the day even started.
It wasn’t exactly a typical founder origin story.
But inside that community, Cameron was building.
He helped launch an organic bakery, a natural foods distribution company, and spent years driving a refrigerated truck up and down the I-5 corridor.
Then one day, the community decided he was growing things too fast… and he was fired.
So he started over with a $10,000 bank loan, a tiny factory, and a life changing trip to Hawaii.
On that trip, Cameron tasted thick-cut, kettle-cooked potato chips and thought: I can make these back in Oregon.
There was just one problem. He had no idea how to fry potatoes.
So how on earth did a Sikh entrepreneur from a commune in Oregon build one of the most beloved chip brands in the world?
What was the operational disaster that nearly killed Kettle before it ever left the West Coast?
And why did launching in London before the rest of America turn out to be a stroke of genius?
Learn all this and more on the latest episode of How I Built This!
HIBT Advice Line: Go Into the Uncomfortable
This week on the Advice Line, I’m joined by Miguel McKelvey, co-founder of WeWork. Miguel helped build WeWork into a global phenomenon, lived through the very public unraveling, and came out the other side with hard-won lessons about leadership and values.
First up, Jane: How do I scale a premium product without compromising what makes it special?
Jane is the founder of Copa Threads an elevated trousers brand made in small batches at a woman-owned factory in Minneapolis. She’s done about $15K since launching. The issue? Customers need a clear reason to pay the premium, and her website doesn’t immediately tell the manufacturing story. Our advice is simple: tell that story over and over – everywhere online!
Next, Melissa: How do I grow when digital ads stop working?
Melissa’s Good Grief sends care packages for life’s hardest moments, with tailored items like journals, teas, and even grief coaching. She’s hovered around $200K for three years and is wondering how to grow. We encouraged her to build a content engine: use every possible channel to spread the word about the business.
Finally, Lee: How do I find more customers ahead of America’s 250th?
Lee’s History List Store sells hundreds of SKUs and did about $750K last year with strong margins and fiercely loyal repeat buyers. Now he is wondering how he can get to the next level: We challenged the premise: the margins are solid, so why the advice?
Miguel leaves us with this: Don’t outsource your weaknesses just because you dislike them. Real leadership means going into the uncomfortable areas just as deliberately as you pursue the parts you love.
If you would like to be featured on an upcoming episode, call and leave a 1-minute message at 1-800-433-1298 or send a voice memo to hibt@id.wondery.com
Wow in the World!
The Science of AHA! Moments!
Have you ever noticed that your BEST ideas come when you’re NOT even trying to think?
Turns out, when your mind wanders and daydreams, your brain is actually making NEW connections and sparking those amazing “AHA!” moments.
But here’s the really cool part – scientists discovered that overthinking actually BLOCKS your creativity, while letting your brain wander helps you solve problems better!
Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is stop trying so hard and just let your mind drift.
So, what happens inside your brain during those lightning-bolt moments of inspiration?
Tune in to discover why daydreaming is actually your secret problem-solving superpower!
From the HIBT Archives!
WeWork: Miguel McKelvey
In 2007, architect Miguel McKelvey was sharing a cramped Brooklyn office when he convinced his charismatic friend Adam Neumann to split the space with him. Miguel saw something bigger than cost-sharing: an opportunity to reimagine how people worked.
Traditional offices felt sterile and isolating, especially for freelancers and entrepreneurs who craved community and inspiration.
With Miguel’s architectural vision combined with Adam’s salesmanship, the idea quickly evolved into something unprecedented: offices designed like social clubs, complete with beer on tap, phone booths, and a “community of creators” ethos that made work feel less like work.
WeWork’s rapid expansion from one Brooklyn space to a global phenomenon valued at nearly $16 billion seemed to validate every assumption about the future of work.
The company redefined office culture for an entire generation, proving that workspace design could be as important as the work itself.
Miguel’s initial idea became the foundation for a movement that changed how millions of people think about where and how they work.
See you next time!
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