Wise Snacks
Deep River, Wise
Address: 228 Raseley St., Berwick, Pennsylvania 18603, USA
Phone: 1 800 GET WISE
Website: www.wisesnacks.com
Email: Contact Form

Wise Snacks

Whether you look to Wise® for new flavors or for the classic crunch, it's been over 90 years since we started making real snacks for friends and families to enjoy together. Continuing to use the highest quality ingredients, we're still headquartered in Berwick, PA - and are proud members of the community that helped lay the foundation for it all.
It all started in 1921 when Earl Wise, Sr. was a young grocer with too many potatoes. Being a frugal businessman, he decided to use the extra potatoes to make potato chips. He did all the work by hand and sold the chips in brown paper bags from his store. Earl's chips enjoyed instant popularity and rapid growth in the Eastern United States.
Only four years after he made his first potato chip, he opened his first production plant. This 32' x 75' concrete building continued to expand over the next two decades until 1944. The production plant was destroyed in a fire that brought production to a halt. 
After eight months, a new state-of-the-art production facility was built and expanded upon for the remainder of the decade.
During the 1950s, as consumers wanted more and more of the chips with the Wise name on them - and Peppy the Owl - we experienced tremendous growth and market expansion. To accommodate this growth, we started inventing new snacks. And in 1969, to reflect the wide array of snacks offered, Wise Potato Chip Co. changed its name to Wise Foods. 
From small batches in his mother's kitchen to a current state-of-the-art ​facility, one thing has never changed: Earl Wise, Sr., and the company that bears his name, makes terrific, all natural chips.
When Earl Wise, Sr. started making chips, he created a legacy. And since then, Wise Foods has been a leader in the snack food industry. That's why the Snack Food Association inducted Earl Wise Sr. into their coveted Circle of Honor on March 22, 2011 - an honor that is only matched by the loyalty of Wise fans.

Deep River Snacks are also now under the Wise umbrella. You can read reviews by clicking on the logo below.
Wise Lightly Salted Potato Chips
It says these chips contain fifty-two percent less sodium than regular chips. That means a staggering eighty grams of salty sodium in a handful of chips. And don't forget the whopping three grams of saturated fat. If you are particularly health-conscious and crave salty potato, a baked potato may be a good alternative. If you crave flavour-free chips, there are plenty with less saturated fat and no salt.   
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Wise Unsalted Potato Chips
If your doctor has told you that you should not consume salt. These are sodium-free, so a craving for potato chips can be satisfied. As long as you do not require flavour, of course. I admire the efforts of Wise to create a healthier chip, but three grams of saturated fat is double what many of their mainstream rivals include in their chips, sodium or no sodium. They tasted much the same as the All Natural and Lightly Salted Chips in the Wise range.   
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Wise Cracked Pepper Kettle Cooked Chips
The first thing I noticed was that all the bad stuff featured on the nutrition label for these kettle-cooked chips were the same numbers as for Wise's regular chips. Ordinarily, kettle chips are even less healthy. The second thing I noticed was that the flavour of these chips is described as Cracked Pepper. Well, I noticed it, but the reason for making a particular note of it was because the vast majority of similar flavours include the word ‘Salt’ in the title, but then go on to taste of just pepper. These tasted of pepper and salty potato, just as they should have.   
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Wise Original Kettle Cooked Potato Chips 
A Nose Plunge Test revealed a warm and welcoming potato aroma. This was followed by a creamy potato taste which made them a very good sandwich side dish. They were a bit greasy, a bit potatoey, and a bit plain.   
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Wise Jalapeno Kettle Cooked Potato Chips 
The nutrition label for these kettle-cooked chips suggested the same figures for Wise's regular chips. I surveyed this variety straight after Wise's Cracked Pepper option. While they nailed the flavour, they lacked in similar proportions. It said on the packet that the variety was jalapeno, and it was. However, jalapeno has a distinctive flavour and a quite hot taste. This is why it features so regularly as a chip flavour option. Now, these did have a jalapeno taste, but they were a bit, meh. There was no particular heat while eating or after eating.   
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Wise Barbecue Kettle Cooked Potato Chips 
A Nose Plunge Test revealed a tiny barbecue aroma. The taste also lacked character. There was no heat, smokiness, or tang. The mix with the potato and oil did, however, bring on a warm and pleasant barbecue taste. These chips were moreish, but I couldn't work out why.   
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Wise Ridgies All Natural Potato Chips
These tasted a lot like oily potato to my uncultured palate. The crunch improved them, but without an additional flavour to add to potato and salt, they seemed little more than a sandwich sidekick to me.   
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Wise Ridgies Chedddar & Sour Cream 
It would be easier to list what these chips did not include in their ingredients list concoction. The list is so extensive that it appears someone has created a flavour and then thought, ‘Actually it could do with a bit of that.’ Then, ‘Now, it could do with a bit of this.’ And then, ‘Maybe a touch of that.’ And so forth. But does it work? Well yes. There was a salty cheesy potato taste, which is pretty much what I had hoped for. It wasn't too mild, but similarly, there certainly wasn't anything remotely mature English Cheddar about it.   
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Wise Ridgies Sour Cream & Onion Chips 
A Nose Plunge Test revealed a mild onion aroma. The flavour sort of matched this, but it was a little more like salty, creamy potato, with a small amount of onion flavouring. This worked well as a combo and presented a standard flavouring example for others to aspire to before they should even attempt to improve upon it.   
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Wise Ridgies Barbecue Potato Chips
Unlike most barbecue chips, my Nose Plunge Test did not reveal much of an aroma. There was maybe a hint of barbecue, at a stretch. My mind may have played tricks, but this did not taste like the same recipe that Wise use on their standard barbecue chips. These had a rounded and well-established barbecue flavouring that packed a little peppery heat. Certainly, an improvement, but also a nicer chip than its regular counterpart.   
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Wise Golden Original Potato Chips
I am not the biggest fan of natural, original, regular or whatever else chips companies call their flavour-free chips, so these tasted a little oily potato to my unrefined palate. Nothing wrong with them, they were run-of-the-mill, but that just made them a price point option, which is a great shame when it comes to potato chips. It would be far preferable if purchases were made based on flavour.   
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Wise BBQ Potato Chips
Wise appears to make chips like vineyards make wine. They have a wide array of barbecue related chips, presumably aimed at chips tasting connoisseurs. From my experience, most of the chips and crisps eating world are happy to munch away and say, “Yes, they are nice.” Sure, most could tell the difference in a blind taste test, but all of Wise's barbecue chips are indeed, 'nice.' This variation was slightly sweet, and there was a mildly hot aftertaste, which was released by a peppery tomato barbecue. But really, does a slight change in taste merit new marketing, branding, positioning, and packaging, of all small variations to the same flavour?   
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Wise Honey BBQ Potato Chips
A chips manufacturer would probably not use the phrase, “Honeyed Barbecue” but that is what these were. They enjoyed a mild, sweet and tangy barbecue seasoning, and if there was a hint of honey it would only have been when first munching into them. I like an accurate description of a pairing and if they had taken the bold step of calling them Honey ‘and’ Barbecue, they would have been marked down.   
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Wise Onion & Garlic Potato Chips
A Nose Plunge Test revealed a mild onion and potato aroma. Nothing else. No hint of there being any flavouring inside. The taste, however, was more engaging. There was a creamy onion, which would probably relate to the garlic enhancement. I am not sure how you can catagorise the strength of garlic because if it were overwhelming, they would taste pretty nasty. As, on one hand, this enhanced the flavour, but on the other, it meant the flavour description was somewhat misleading.   
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Wise Salt & Vinegar Kettle Cooked Chips 
There was the slightest Vinegar aroma, which was encouraging. The taste was also an interesting combination of three rather than two flavours, because the potato was noticeable. The vinegar had a sweetish taste, maybe even a hint of balsamic, but probably not. Nevertheless, the salt was minimal, but the flavour was not overly dominated by tart vinegar.   
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Wise Cheese Snacks

Wise Other Bagged Snacks