[ad_1]
“Mister Pommes Chips” Hans-Heinrich Zweifel has died at the age of 87. On Monday, he “fell asleep peacefully due to a heart condition,” according to an obituary. The longtime pilot of the Doubt and Chips pioneer is no longer.
“We are losing a popular and funny patron,” reads the obituary. He “played a key role in building the company and further developed and shaped it with great commitment, passion and a wealth of ideas”.
Hans-Heinrich Zweifel is the founder of the Zweifel empire. He was the boss from the start and has run the company since 1958. In the beginning everything was still done by hand. Two tons of potatoes were peeled, cut, fried and packed every day. The result: 500 kilos of chips.
Red numbers at the beginning
The first fully automatic production plant arrived only two years later. It produced 180 kilos of chips per hour. The investment was huge. So big, in fact, that the company was in deficit for a long time. But success came over time. The potato chip pioneer became one of the richest Swiss. The business magazine “Bilanz” values the family assets at 250 to 300 million francs.
The anecdote of how Zweifel crept into a foreign company headquarters in Agno TI in 1962 is legendary. He stopped by the window with a pull-up and spied on the competition. He wanted to contest the deal with the Höngger. Doubt uncovered a large fryer and nearly a thousand metal stands. He prepared for battle and won.
So far, no one has managed to break the domain of doubt in Switzerland. The company, led by Zweifel’s son Christoph (51), now has an annual turnover of over 240 million francs. The most popular type of chips is the classic in red: paprika.
Hansheiri industrial spy
“Hansheiri” Zweifel managed the company’s operating fortunes until the 1990s. His path to becoming the nation’s chip king was the result of chance. He was 25 when he founded Zweifel Pomy-Chips AG as a newly qualified ETH agronomist.
A relative of his experienced the American snack on a farm in Katzenrüti ZH. The whole neighborhood was in love with the slices. But a heartbeat suddenly stopped his life. Hans-Heinrich Zweifel took over the orphaned potato sausage.
In his father’s cider factory, the young entrepreneur began fiddling with four deep fryers. He found that only a few types tasted good. The fact that he had to heat up the warehouse – that way the slices stayed bright as they were fried and he booked his honeymoon in America to do some industrial espionage in the chip factories there. As he did later in Ticino calmly.
Source link
