Better Made: Detroit's Last Chip Standing
The last of Detroit's twenty-plus hometown chip makers, still frying on Gratiot Avenue since 1930.
In the 1930s, Detroit had more than twenty potato-chip companies all fighting for the city’s lunch pails. Today essentially one hometown name is left standing: Better Made, still frying chips on Gratiot Avenue.
It began in 1930, when two Sicilian immigrants, Cross Moceri and Peter Cipriano, went into the chip business together. They started as the “Cross & Peters Company.” The name changed to Better Made a few years later. That was reportedly a poke at a rival called “Best Maid.” In the early days the partners fried the chips and hand-stapled them into waxed-paper bags. They sold them door-to-door, at movie theaters, and from stands out on Belle Isle. The business grew. In 1955 it moved into the red-brick factory on Gratiot where it still operates.
Better Made has stayed family-owned and proudly local. The Cipriano family still runs it, nearly a century on. And Detroiters have held up their end. By one oft-quoted figure, the average American eats about four pounds of potato chips a year. Detroiters put away around seven.
Where to see it
Better Made chips are sold across Michigan grocery stores, and the factory at 10148 Gratiot Avenue in Detroit has an outlet store.