The road from Hanover, Pa., to Baltimore is paved with potato chips -- plain and wavy, fried in cottonseed oil, lard and olestra, and dusted in three kinds of orange barbecue seasoning, Carolina, honey and red hot.
Every morning before 7 a.m., a small convoy of 80 Utz Quality Foods route vans bearing the likeness of the apple-cheeked "Little Utz Girl" makes the 40-mile trek to Baltimore, delivering snacks to stores, supermarket chains and farmers' markets, and to people like Anita Wilkinson, who wouldn't dream of eating any other brand.
"Utz is it," declared Wilkinson as she stood in Cross Street Market this week dressed in a Baltimore Ravens sweat shirt and toasting the American Football Conference champions with a plastic cup filled with Coors Light.
"Lays and all that other stuff aren't as good," said Wilkinson, 54, who owns the Old Lighthouse Inn on Light Street and lives in Fullerton. "They just don't taste the same."
Sunday, when the Baltimore Ravens take on the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV, it's likely the bowls of potato chips, pretzels, corn chips, popcorn and other salty snacks Baltimore-area fans will be munching were made in Hanover or a nearby Pennsylvania town, an area that bills itself as "The Snack Food Capital of the World." Super Bowl Sunday is one of the biggest snack-food sales days of the year, eclipsed only by the Fourth of July, Labor Day and New Year's Eve.
Dozens of snack food manufacturers are in York, Berks and Lancaster counties in south-central Pennsylvania. In addition to Utz, there's Snyder's of Hanover in Hanover (the region's No. 1 pretzel maker and the country's No. 2 pretzel company) and Herr Foods Inc. in Nottingham (No. 3 in potato chips regionally). Other manufacturers include Martin's Potato Chips in Thomasville, Bickel's Potato Chips in Manheim and Snyder of Berlin in Berlin.
York County's convention and visitor's bureau promotes the "Snack Food Capital" claim on its Web site, although bureau President Ann Druck acknowledged that she's uncertain where the title originated.
"This is it right here," said J. M. Herr, president of Herr's, a $100 million snack food company his father founded in 1946.
"Some people say it's the most competitive market in the country," said Herr, a former Snack Food Association president. "That's probably true because of the number of players."
