Welcome to the C.J. Vitners Company manufacturing division in Freeport, Illinois. The facility contains a 135,000 square foot production plant nestled on a 50-acre site. Freeport is a small, friendly community of about 35,000 located approximately 100 miles northwest of Chicago.

When you see the steam rising from the plant, the vapor of steam and the smell of fresh potatoes let people know for miles around those great, fresh Vitner's potatoes chips are being produced! We receive potato deliveries at the plant around the clock.

All incoming ingredients, including potatoes, oils, and corn are weighted on our truck scale. The scale is tested and monitored regularly by the Department of Agriculture for accuracy.

It's a spectacular sight to see the truck dumper deliver its load! Potatoes are received from as far south as Florida and Texas and as far north as North Dakota.

Vitner's uses over a half a million pounds of potatoes a week! We work very closely with our suppliers to purchase only the finest quality potatoes to make our great tasting snacks!

The fresh potatoes are automatically delivered to a processing bin from which they will be made into potato chips the same day!

There are six holding bins for the potatoes. Our automated system has the capability of mixing bins so that the best possible quality product is delivered to our customers.

These potatoes have been peeled and are about to be inspected one last time before they are sliced and head to the fryers.

There is a continuous stream of potatoes to be processed all day. A hundred pounds of potatoes makes about thirty pounds of potato chips!

Here's where the potatoes get sliced. Centrifugal force pushes the potatoes against sharp blades to make slices 53 thousandths of an inch thick! The average potato makes about one hundred slices!

From there the potato slices are delivered to the fryers. This is a view of two potato chip fryers. One fryer can produce 3,200 pounds of potato chips per hour and the other can produce 4,000 pounds per hour!

The finished potato chips are electronically scanned for defects or dark spots. 128 tiny air jets eject the bad ones. The green sensor constantly monitors moisture and the oil contents of our chips. The chips also are run through a metal detector to ensure no outside containments get into the product.

Then the finished potato chips are carried away to our packaging room where they will be seasoning and bagged for delivery to a store near you!

Our Quality Assurance Lab stays busy checking everything from oil stability, to seasoning coverage, to the weight of the finished product.

Electronic scales above the packaging machines weight the chips and automatically choose the right weight combination to drop into the bags below.

Our scales, like all of our machines in the plant, are sanitized daily for the safety of our customers.

Here is a barbeque seasoning being applied to the chips. We can run as many as 15 different flavors at one time!

It's an awesome sight to watch all the machines applying seasoning and weighing chips at the same time. It's a very busy place!

Beneath the scales and seasoners are the bagging machines. It takes over thirty bagging machines to package all the different sizes and varieties of products we make every day.

Bags actually start as a roll of film. The film winds through the bagging machine where it is formed filled and sealed.

Here is one of our packaging rooms where all sorts of snacks are made every day. From potato chips to corn chips to popcorn to our famous hot crunchy! It takes a huge inventory of boxes to package the finished snacks. We make over 2.5 million bags of great tasting snacks every week!

It takes a huge inventory of boxes to package the finished snacks. We make over 2.5 million bags of great tasting snacks every week!

Our packers are the last point of inspection before the snacks are shipped off to you. We have a very dedicated work force - some of our packers have worked for the Vitners Company for twenty years!

We maintain over two hundred different SKU'S. Here the film is stored in a climate-controlled room.

Rows and rows of finished snacks are waiting to be loaded on a truck. It's not unusual for the raw potatoes to go from an incoming potato truck to your store shelves in twenty-four hours!

We have seventeen loading docks and a fleet of tractor-trailers to get the finished product into the market in the freshest conditions possible.

Our fleet runs between Freeport and our Master Distribution center in Chicago. Here an air-cushioned trailer unloads at the Distribution Center.

The product is stored in the Chicago warehouse to be broken down and sent out to our customers.

We have over one hundred delivery vehicles to deliver our products from our Distribution Centers to a store near you.