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More Than 200 Miles Fresher Mister Bee Potato Chips joins West Virginia University at Parkersburg in an agribusiness partnership. written by jordan carter In the 1960s, Mister Bee Potato Chips was advertised as “200 miles fresher” than its competitors. Its new agribusiness partnership with West Virginia University at Parkersburg is about to make its potato chips even fresher than that. railroad tracks from the Ohio River. Leo and Sarah Klein founded Mister Bee Potato Chip Company—named after one of its original incorporators—in 1951. Back then, Mister Bee Potato Chips were fried in the morning and distributed by Mr. Klein in the afternoon. The locals of Parkersburg fondly remember elementary school field trips to Mister Bee’s factory, where they ate potato chips hot off the line or enjoyed them with the milkman’s delivery of Broughton dip. Now, almost 70 years later, the West Virginia Potato Chip Company is still the sole potato chip manufacturer in the state. The smell of frying potatoes hangs thick in the air along West Virginia Avenue in Parkersburg. That’s where the West Virginia Potato Chip Company—producer of Mister Bee Potato Chips—is located, nestled in the corner of a residential neighborhood across the
A partnership takes root In 2015, Parkersburg native Mary Anne Ketelsen became Mister Bee’s majority owner and, in 2018, she became a managing member. It was in 2018 when Ketelsen first met WVUP’s President Chris Gilmer and expressed her interest in giving back to her alma mater and supporting her hometown community. “WVUP has always been very special to me. It’s in my blood,” Ketelsen says. WVUP is just a 15-minute drive down Route 47 from Mister Bee. There, down a tree-lined side road, no more than a stone’s throw from the main campus, is a small, unassuming farm with gently rolling hills. On 10 of its 25 acres, potato plants are just beginning to sprout. But until March of this year, the farm had lain fallow. Ketelsen had long dreamt of using locally grown potatoes in Mister Bee Potato Chips, but the state’s potato production never reached viable levels, leaving the company no choice but to source them from Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. The cost of freight alone was upwards of $5,000 per week. So, this spring, Ketelsen made a
52 wvl • summer 2020
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