New Food Products

Dis Here Company Put Italian Beef Sammiches, Deep-Dish Pizza, Chicago-Style Dog Flavors on Potato Chips

April 10, 2025

Chicago startup Local Style Potato Chips has brought chips mimicking the flavors of three signature Chicago culinary staples to market, looking to expand throughout the Second City.

Andy Hanacek

North, West and South sides unite! According to a news report on WBEZ Chicago, a local startup company called Local Style Potato Chips just launched a line of chips flavored to mimic several Chicago-related delicacies: the Italian beef sandwich, deep dish pizza and the Chicago-style hot dog (NO KETCHUP!).

The new line of snacks (which includes a standard, classic salted potato chip variety as well) are available at some 15 local markets and delicatessens. Local Style founder Laura Gardner — who previously worked for Procter & Gamble, Gatorade (as part of PepsiCo) and Foxtrot — has designs on getting the chips all across the city. She told WBEZ that her global travels, where snacks often took on local, signature flavors, inspired her to wonder why Chicago didn’t have that same thing.

The WBEZ article offers a fun look at the challenges and multiple iterations of flavor design for the chips, and is a good read, particularly for any hardcore, born-and-bred Chicagoans — or transplants, we will accept you — who can discern the difference between Lou Malnati’s and Giordano’s pizza, loves their beefs (yes, that’s proper grammar) “baptized,” or knows just how much celery salt you need on that Chicago-style dog (again, with NO KETCHUP!).

About the Author

Andy Hanacek | Senior Editor

Andy Hanacek has covered meat, poultry, bakery and snack foods as a B2B editor for nearly 20 years, and has toured hundreds of processing plants and food companies, sharing stories of innovation and technological advancement throughout the food supply chain. In 2018, he won a Folio:Eddie Award for his unique "From the Editor's Desk" video blogs, and he has brought home additional awards from Folio and ASBPE over the years. In addition, Hanacek led the Meat Industry Hall of Fame for several years and was vice president of communications for We R Food Safety, a food safety software and consulting company.