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In 1930, Cross Moceri and Peter Cipriano opened a potato chip company in Detroit.
The two Sicilian immigrants named their venture Cross & Peter Company.
Years later, the Cipriano family bought Moceri's stake and renamed the business Better Made.
The company's potato chips have become a Detroit staple ever since.
Better Made started by packing their potato chips in waxed paper bags, sealing each one with metal staples.
Workers filled and closed these bags by hand, unlike today's machines that can package thousands of bags per hour.
The company sold these chips through two main channels:
In 1930s Detroit, 23 companies made potato chips.
Workers packed crisp chips into wax paper bags that lined grocery store shelves across the city.
Better Made started in a small rented building with two fryers and five employees.
They delivered fresh chips to corner stores in a single truck, competing against established names like New Era and Pfeiffer's.
Today, Better Made still operates from their original Gratiot Avenue plant, while their former rivals have vanished.
Their red and yellow bags remain a fixture in Detroit shops, outlasting the other chip makers who once filled the city's industrial districts.
Better Made Potato Chip workers organized their union in 1937.
Their contract raised wages from 32 to 40 cents per hour.
Assembly line workers, who had been standing for 12-hour shifts on concrete floors, got rubber mats and hourly breaks.
The night shift gained an extra 5 cents per hour.
The contract also guaranteed workers a six-day workweek.
In 1955, Better Made Potato Chips moved into a red-brick factory at 10148 Gratiot Avenue in Detroit.
Workers now sliced, fried, and packaged chips in a 25,000-square-foot space—triple the size of their old facility.
The building's twin smokestacks and loading docks transformed a local snack maker into a regional producer, shipping trucks filled with potato chips across Michigan.
In 1963, Better Made Potato Chips added barbecue seasoning to their plain chips, marking their first step beyond traditional salted varieties.
The barbecue flavor combined paprika, brown sugar, and garlic powder—a mix that took six months of kitchen testing to perfect.
When seasoned bags hit Detroit store shelves in March 1973, sales jumped 42% compared to plain chips.
By December 1974, Better Made launched their sour cream and onion chips, blending dried cream, onion powder, and chives.
This second flavored variety soon captured 23% of the company's total sales.
Better Made Potato Chips bought New Era Potato Chip Company from Frito-Lay in 1970.
Frito-Lay had stopped making New Era chips, which left customers missing the familiar brand.
Better Made took over New Era's recipes and equipment.
For Detroit snack lovers, this meant they could once again buy the chips they'd grown up eating.
The purchase also gave Better Made a second production line at a time when their original factory was running at full capacity.
Better Made Potato Chips merged with Made-Rite Chip Company in 1994, combining two Michigan snack makers.
Better Made operated from Detroit, while Made-Rite produced chips in Bay City, 120 miles north.
The merger added Made-Rite's three production lines and 50 delivery routes to Better Made's operations, doubling their daily chip output from 10,000 to 20,000 pounds.
Made-Rite's distribution network reached Michigan's northern counties, complementing Better Made's strong presence in Detroit and the southern regions.
This merger expanded Better Made's reach from serving 2,000 stores to 3,500 stores across Michigan by 1995.
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