Utz has similar entrepreneurial roots. Using hand-operated equipment, William and Salie Utz began making and selling potato chips out of their Hanover home in 1921. William Utz quit a shoe factory job to launch the enterprise, Hanover Home Brand Potato Chips, with $300, and sold the snacks in markets in Hanover and Baltimore, according to the company Web site.
Utz has four factories in Hanover, makes 1 million pounds of chips and 900,000 pounds of pretzels each week, and distributes its snacks along 700 routes in 13 states, according to its Web site.
Today, its chairman and chief executive is Michael W. Rice, who took over the company from his father, F.X. Rice. The elder Rice got into the Utz family business when he married the daughter of the company's founders in 1938.
