SLO County company serves up Hawaiian-style potato chips, popcorn. Here’s where to find them
A Nipomo company is serving up Hawaiian-style snacks at farmers markets across California.
Started by brothers Cary and Michael Riter in 2011, Ohana Bros. Snack Company offers consumers a range of sweet and savory gourmet snacks with island-inspired flavors.
“Prepared in small batches and seasoned to perfection,” the snack company website says Ohana Bros. offers “wholesome, fresh snacks.”
Their chips and popcorn can be found locally at stalls at farmers markets in Atascadero, Baywood, Cambria, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo and Templeton.
Made without artificial ingredients or preservatives, Ohana Bros. offerings include hand-crafted Maui-Style potato chips in flavors including habanero and honey barbecue. The company also serves up a “perfectly seasoned” classic with its Himalayan pink salt potato chips.
Not to be missed, the Ohana Bros. website says, are its Maui onion chips, which offer a “crunchy mouth watering treat.” The company recommends dipping the chips in sour cream: “You’d think you were in heaven.”
In addition, the San Luis Obispo County-based snack company sells three different flavors of handmade island-style gourmet popcorn, including the award-winning caramel sea salt variety, which is made with brown and white sugar, Mexican vanilla and real butter.
SLO County company sells gourmet potato chips, popcorn
Before co-founding Ohana Bros., Cary Riter was the owner and CEO of City Beach Volleyball, which had indoor amusement and recreation centers in Fremont and Santa Clara.
Riter said that he and his brother Michael got into the potato chip business in 2006 out of “kind of a fluke.”
After the two brothers attended a conference where someone made homemade potato chips, Cary Riter said, the “delicious flavors” prompted them to start thinking about what it would be like to sell these chips for a living.
“It’s a $40 billion industry and nobody was specializing in gourmet potato chips,” Riter said. ”Not one of them can create what we do.”
The brothers then went “in search for the DNA of the best potato chip possible,” he said. Through trial and error, they formulated their own seasonings with natural ingredients.
When he announced the launch of his company in 2012 on his Linkedin page, Riter said Ohana Bros. was “a truly scalable (and heck of a lot more fun) business venture” than his previous efforts.
Originally, the Riter brothers sold their products in shopping malls, offering consumers Hawaiian-style shaved ice, hot dogs and french fries along with their other snacks. Now, they exclusively cater to farmers markets with handcrafted popcorn and potato chips.
Ohana Bros. products are also available for sale on the company’s website, ohanabrossnackco.com.
