How Much Would You Pay For This Collection Of Just Five ‘Perfect’ Potato Chips?

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.