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Makers of Kitch’n Cook’d chips to close up shop | News, Sports, Jobs
Mark and Diane Kobayashi pose with a few of the last bags of their family’s iconic Maui Kitch’n Cook’d potato chips Friday afternoon in Kahului. The familiar clear plastic bags with distinctive red-and-yellow prints are soon to be things of the past as the longtime family business closes down Dec. 15. — The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
For the past 66 years, customers have known that you can’t stop after just one of Maui Potato Chip Factory’s signature “Kitch’n Cook’d” chips.
As the family-owned and operated Kahului business closes on Dec. 15, the next generation may not get to experience this iconic salty snack, but the local company’s legacy is steadfast.
Third-generation owner, operator and potato chip maker Mark Kobayashi said the Maui Potato Chip Factory would not stay in business as long as it has without its regular customers and support from its employees, family, friends and neighbors.
“For us to have survived 66 years is more a triumph of community to take care of the local people here, the local companies,” Kobayashi said Wednesday afternoon. “A lot of times we were lucky because we were a small business and all these people who really didn’t have to step up, they stepped up and helped us out to survive and keep our name in the limelight.”
The original Maui Potato Chip Factory was established in January 1956 when Kobayashi’s late grandfather, Yoshio Kobayashi, took over the business for just $500. Yoshio was already familiar with the art of cooking potatoes, having worked at the factory, and also from his time as a chef at military camps located in “country potato,” like Montana, during World War II.
Founder Yoshio Kobayashi poses with sons Dewey Kobayashi (left) and Takayuki “Joe” Kobayashi in a family photo on display in the sales room of Maui Potato Chip Factory. — The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
He would ride with the sergeant and distribute meals to the workers in the field, Mark said.
His grandfather tweaked the recipe and produced handmade potato chips with no preservatives. As the business grew, Mark’s father, Dewey Kobayashi, and Uncle Takayuki “joes” Kobayashi stepped in to help. After school in the evenings, Mark and his brother, Edwin Kobayashi, would also assist with backstage operations, such as cleaning and bagging potatoes, in between homework assignments.
“My early memories were of my grandfather, grandmother, mother and my father, they would sit around in a circle and hand-peel bags of potatoes,” Mark said.
Then, while his parents were at work at Maui Pineapple Company, his grandparents would stay back to make the chips, bag them and wheelbarrow the goods across the street to the once-buzzing Kahului Shopping Center to sell their products to the different markets.
Their original idea was to make potato chips for when residents would go to the movie theater in the shopping complex, so that they would have salty snacks to bring in, he recalled.
Under the headline, “Business is Too Good — No More Orders Please,” Dewey Kobayashi graces the cover of Parade Magazine in 1976, which is on display in the sales room of Maui Potato Chip Factory. — The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
Edwin was eventually supposed to take over the family business, but sadly passed away at 21 years old from cancer, a shock to the family. Mark was going to drop out of the University of Hawaii at Manoa to help with operations, but friends Michael Sueda and Claro Capili Jr. stepped in for one year to allow him to finish his degree in electrical engineering.
“It just blew all of our minds when he passed away and my two friends just stepped up to the plate,” he said. “My father folks really appreciate it.”
The building is currently in its third and final location at 295 Lalo St., where it has stood for 50 years. The original building located near the old Kahului Shopping Center was destroyed by a tidal wave.
Shortly after the second move to Happy Valley, The Wall Street Journal put his dad and his Kitch’n Cook’d Potato Chips on its front page in October 1975. From that point on, the business boomed. Customers started to learn the exact day and time that potato chip deliveries would take place so that they could get in line first.
His father quickly became the face and voice of the company, Mark said.
“Basically we were just the little guy, just trying to survive,” he said. “Then, it got crazy.”
Over the years, the see-through bags with red-and-yellow labels have become a nostalgic childhood memory for the Maui community and are nationally recognized.
At the company’s peak, there were 40 employees, Mark said, but recently he’s been the sole potato chip maker using a long-standing family
How much does DoorDash pay per delivery? How much does Uber Eats pay?
The global online food delivery market reached $189.7 billion in 2021 and is only expected to grow, according to Grand View Research.
In the fourth quarter of the business year, DoorDash and Uber Eats both made impressive progress. DoorDash recorded all-time high order numbers, and Uber Eats turned a profit for the first time, according to Protocol — but which one company is better to work for?
Whether you’re a self-starter looking for ways to supplement your income or a customer wondering about your delivery worker’s wages, here’s the information you’re after.
Do you tip Uber and Lyft drivers? Rideshare tipping and compensation explained.
Is Uber safe? What about Lyft? Addressing safety concerns of passengers and drivers.
How much does DoorDash pay?
Dashers make a base pay of between $2 and $10 per delivery, depending on factors such as duration, distance and desirability of the order, according to DoorDash. The company claims its drivers make approximately $25 per hour of work, plus tips.
Rider reports drivers can expect to make between $10 and $25 per hour. Rider emphasizes, though, that DoorDash drivers are responsible for their own vehicle expenses such as gas and maintenance, so Dashers do not pocket all of their earnings and tips.
The company also offers promotions which allow drivers to earn more money, including Peak Pay, Guaranteed Earnings and Challenge Bonuses.
How much do Uber drivers make?:That depends on where you drive
How much do Lyft drivers make?:What we know
How do DoorDash drivers get paid?
Dashers can choose to receive their pay in a number of ways, according to the company. Options include a weekly direct deposit at no charge, a Fast Pay option which charges a $1.99 fee per daily withdrawal and a DasherDirect prepaid debit card which provides instant deposits with no fee after each delivery.
According to DoorDash, drivers can also opt into receiving cash on delivery orders.
How much does Uber Eats pay?
Uber Eats drivers, as of the summer of 2022, make an average of $9.37 per trip and $15.84 per hour, according to Gridwise. Like many rideshare drivers, Uber Eats drivers are also responsible for their own vehicle expenses.
How much to tip for DoorDash and Uber Eats
DoorDash and Uber Eats workers should always be tipped. The standard in the restaurant industry is 15 to 20%, according to Shopfood. But Rider says a minimum tip amount between $4 and $6 should be the norm on all orders; even a very cheap delivery may require the same driving or biking distance as a more expensive meal.
If your delivery driver has to endure inclement weather, that should also boost their tips. Rider suggests rideshare drivers working in adverse weather conditions should be rewarded for their willingness to work when others are staying inside.
Just curious? We’re here to answer your everyday questions
Netflix’s Drink Masters Is a Revealing Look at Modern Bartending
One of the most emblematic scenes of Drink Masters, a cocktail-making competition series that debuted on Netflix earlier this year, could double as a cruel childhood prank on an unsuspecting palate. Into a stainless steel tabletop still went a mash of black olives—the foamy, drab gray sludge looking not unlike the burnt sugar that seeps out of a well-roasted sweet potato—and what emerged from the distillation tubes was a liquid as clear as crystal . It was the backbone ingredient to one of the most interesting cocktails made in the series: “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost,” a punch composed of rhum agricole, olive tapenade distillate, jerk spices and citrus.
Conceptualized by Tao, a Tunisian-born traveling bartender based in Montreal, the cocktail, and every shot documenting its construction, was precisely what I was hoping to see out of a competition series dedicated to the murky realms of mixology. Tao makes a fairly left-field connection based on the breadth of his globetrotting: The robust, earthy funk of olives provides structure to the similarly funky flavors of rhum agricole. “There’s no connection between olives and the Caribbean,” Tao says, albeit incorrectly, given the olive’s prominence in Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican cuisines. “There are olive notes that I personally pick up in those types of rums.”
With his wide-brimmed hats, septum piercing and a penchant for making even the wildest flavor combinations feel almost pragmatic in composition, Tao looks the part of a newborn star. That alone is noteworthy. While countless celebrity chefs have been made through televised exposure over the decades, even the best bartenders have stared through a glass darkly—their influence may cross over, but their names and visas never quite materialize in a mainstream context. Drink Masters’ contribution to modern bartending is unlikely to be its ability to churn out celebrities, or even offer an accurate depiction of the upper echelons of mixology. The question, perhaps, is whether it can give shape to the bartender as a keenly creative force, and not an object of ridicule.
“Suddenly we’re transported back to the mid-aughts, to the heart of what made the molecular mixology trend so repulsive, even though the contestants themselves have clearly moved beyond that ethos.”
Drink Masters isn’t the first drinks-based competition produced for video, but it might as well be. In 2008, Absolut sponsored a shoddy Top Chefs knockoff called On the Rocks: The Search for America’s Top Bartendersproduced by LXTV, the company responsible for those lifestyle and human interest shows that air on NBC on Saturday afternoons. It was an online exclusive back then, but if it weren’t for a trailer available on YouTube and an IMDb entry, you’d be forgiven for thinking it never happened. One of the few things Drink Masters and On the Rocks have in common is the same $100,000 grand prize, despite more than a decade of inflation and an almost incomprehensible boost in production value. Alas, in a boozy competition, it’s not the competition element that requires proof of concept, it’s the mixology.
The form of Drink Masters should register as comfort food for anyone who has watched any kind of popular food programming over the past two decades: Twelve contestants compete in various themed challenges, each with an all-but-impossible time limit. Every week, one bartender is eliminated. It is a time-tested formula, and Drink Masters succeeds because it’s based on a can’t-fail template of TV-making, combined with Papa Netflix’s arsenal of the latest high-speed imaging technology to make garnishing a cocktail look like placing the finishing strokes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
And like other Netflix reality shows (eg, The Circle), there is a notable punching bag, the contestant whose book bags to be judged by its cover—and who is swiftly eliminated as a result. It’s no big spoiler to say that the first person was eliminated on Drink Masters is an Instagram influencer. Her first drink is a Margarita inspired by the Aperol Spritz. It bores judge and renowned New York bar owner Julie Reiner to tears, but it’s crushable, because of course it is; her redemptive shot to stave off elimination is a staid variation on a Negroni, because of course it is. The first send-off serves as a sort of mission statement on what the judges are not looking for, and what the show as a whole hopes to surpass.
Yet, somehow, for all the “elevation” that the judges are seeking out of the contestants, Drink Masters feels largely paint-by-numbers, lacking the specificity of vision that some of the best cooking competition shows exude. It doesn’t showcase the heartwarming charm of human foibles like The Great British Bake Off; it doesn’t have the drama or game theory of Top