Remembering when Dentler Maid Chips dominated the local potato chip market.
Editor’s note: This story first appeared on April 21, 1963.
“The was a time when we wouldn’t allow an outsider in the plant. We were afraid a competitor would find out our method of peeling and slicing potatoes for potato chips,” George W. Dentler of Dentler Maid Foods said the other afternoon.
“I guess you could say that most of the machinery is more or less standard now,” said Arthur B. Preble, a partner with Dentler in the food manufacturing firm which Dentler’s father, George H. Dentler, began operating 50 years ago and which remains as one of the few independent producers of potato chips in the United States.
“We had the first fully automatic chip machine west of the Mississippi,” Preble went on. “We put it in in 1934. Dallas had the second, in 1936.”
“Yeah,” said Dentler, “it cost us more money than we thought existed in those days, $11,000 plus freight.”
“It could turn out 250 to 275 pounds of finished potato chips an hour,” Preble said. “We have one machine here now that can do from 1,500 to 1,800 pounds an hour, and we have two other 1,000-pound-an-hour machines. Actually, this capacity is above what we need...”
“We turn about 90,000 pounds of potato chips a week. Oh, gosh, no, I don’t know how many nickel bags that is, but it takes 350,000 pounds of raw potatoes. We get about 12 carloads of potatoes in here each week,” Dentler said.
“I can’t remember when we really thought we were doing something when we cooked 100 sacks of potatoes a day,” Preble said. “Back even before, when we were still cooking chips in pots we thought we were doing good if we did 15 to 18 sacks a day.
“From the beginning we have been in the potato chip business,” Dentler said. “Potato chips and horse radish. It was 50 years ago that Dad bought out the H.J. Wise Co. He was employed at Henke and Pillot, but he was ambitious and I guess he wanted to be independent.
“Anyway, that’s all they did then, potato chips and horse radish. That was when we were still over in the First Ward, at 1809 Summer St. Back in those days, they had a great number of fires. Every time the fire trucks went by everybody ran to the Dentler plant, because they knew that’s where the fire was. Finally a bog fire wrecked it for good. We built over here (2116 McGowen Ave.) about 1930.
“There’s one thing I always disagreed with my father about. He was a man of great physical vigor, and the hardest way was the easiest way for him to do anything. He thought any day he didn’t work 16 hours was a day wasted. But he was optimistic. We kidded him when he built a new garage at the old place. We had one truck, but
he built it large enough for two. “When we built this place we didn’t have enough merchandise to wad a shotgun here. We’ve since added 18,000 square feet and leased another 8,000 across the street.” “We have 56 trucks now,” Preble added. “I’ll tell you about my father,” Dentler went on. “About 1950, he and I got into the old business together. One night, we were driving back to town from a well that had just blown in. I reached over and patted him on the knee and asked him what he was going to do with all this oil money.
“He said, ‘I just need three meals a day, and I can already afford them. I can just drive one car, and I have two. I just need one bed to sleep in, but I have at least 10 in my home. I only wear one suit of clothes, but I have a closet full, and the same is true of shirts and shoes and ties. I have more than I need already. I’m going to put the money in the bank.’ And he did. He died in 1952 at the age of 70.
“This is strictly a family business (George H. Dentler and Sons). Preble and I each own 40 percent of it. He married my sister, Beatrice, in 1931 and came in then. My two daughters each have 5 percent and their husbands are in the business here. And his son and daughter each have 5 percent, and his son is in with us, too.
“Preble and I are senior partners, and if there’s any loafing to be done, we want to be the ones to do it. But we keep in touch. We like to know what’s going on. After all, if a dollar is spent, we’re spending 80 percent of it,” said Dentler who had already announced he was leaving that afternoon for a three-day fishing trip.
“Those machines do everything. They peel the potatoes, wash them, slice them, fry them and salt them. Of course, the potatoes have to be inspected after they leave the peeling vat, to make sure the eyes are clean or that a bad spot doesn’t get through. And they’re inspected again after they’re fried,” said Preble, who then left to see a doctor about a sinus condition.
The packing machines are in the other part of the plant. We have one in there that does 800 nickel bags a minute — 800!” Dentler said, taking up the story again.
“We try not to make any more chips than we have orders for on any given day. The salesman bring their orders one a day and they are delivered the next. Well, I guess you might say we sort of have a corner on the potato chip market. According to one survey, we have 10 ½ percent of the sales in our area. You could say our area is 125 miles in any direction from Houston. Well, I don’t mean 125 miles down there in the Gulf. It wouldn’t hold there.
“We do a lot of other foods, too, of course. Salad dressing, pickles, relishes, corn chips and other snack foods and horse radish, of course.
“But potato chips are first with us.”
Postscript: In 1965, Dentler Maid Potato Chips was sold to Pet Milk. which was expanding its specialty and snack food lines. The old Dentler building in the First Ward was sold and eventually fell into neglect. A Houston couple bought it in 2013 and renovated it, turning the onetime factory site — the chips were made in outbuildings and sold in the front, along with horseradish, pickles, olives, mustard and other condiments — into a residential showcase.