Herr Foods still has adequate supply of chips potatoes

Herr Foods is still in the chips despite a recent potato shortfall.

The southern Chester County salty snack maker purchases about 15 tractor-trailer loads of potatoes each weekday.
That's 3.4 million pounds a week, roughly 125 million to 150 million pounds of potatoes a year, said Ed Herr, company president and member of the family that owns the company.

That's a lot of spuds, so when the crop is threatened, Herr keeps an alert eye on the situation.
And the crop is in trouble now because of the lack of rain throughout the South, causing low potato yields. Then there are floods in the Midwest.

While some potato chip makers like Ira Middleswarth &Son of Synder County are feeling the shortfall, Herr said his company is successfully hashing through the situation.
"We follow the potato harvests up the East Coast starting in South Florida in April then South Florida to North Florida, North Florida to North Carolina, North Carolina to Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and then Michigan,"Herr said.

"It hasn't been a huge impact for us. So far we're only shorted 10 to 20 trailer loads in the last month."
Most of the damage to potato crops has happened in Missouri, Herr said, and that is not a state where the company buys its potatoes.