Most people would agree that the vast majority of potato chips hover somewhere around “pretty good” in terms of quality. But the folks at St. Eriks, a Swedish brewery, are looking to radically elevate the potato chip game with their latest offering. In an act of branding hubris, the chips don’t even have a clever name, bearing only “St Eriks” on a box which looks more likely to hold vintage-year champagne than the pedestrian snack.
Meant to complement the brewery’s IPA, each chip is chock-full of fancy Scandanavian ingredients such as matsutake mushrooms, truffle seaweed, India Pale Ale wort, dill, onion and Ammärnas-region almond potatoes.
Here’s the companion IPA to complete the pairing:
Below you can watch an employee from the brewery giving his explanation for greenlighting the “$10 potato chip” project:
The price tag matches the expectations set by the bougie packaging and haughty ingredient list. A box goes for the equivalent of $56. Oh, and a box contains just five chips total. That’s $11.20 per chip. Considering these are meant to complement pricey St. Eriks beer, you’re looking at about $20 per round for a beer and one lonely (but very proud!) potato chip.
Then again, maybe they had to charge $10 to break even on what appears to be some very pricey and professional chip photography:
St. Eriks’ first batch of these chips was limited to 100 boxes, so even if you think $56 is a steal for chips of this pedigree, you’re out of luck until the brewery resumes production.
This may all end up being a cleverly-disguised publicity stunt with no real long-term viability, but if it manages to raise awareness of St. Erik’s beer AND convince at least 100 folks to pony up $50 for five chips, then...bravo, St. Eriks. Give your marketing team a raise.