In the 1990's, Stacy Madison and her boyfriend Mark Andrus were selling pita sandwiches from a converted hot dog cart in Boston. They decided to bake the leftover pita into chips, adding a dash of parmesan or cinnamon-sugar. At first they handed them out for free, but soon discovered that people were happy to pay for them. So they eventually decided to leave the sandwich cart behind and launch Stacy's Pita Chips. They hoped the brand might grow into a modest regional business—but it kept growing. Roughly ten years after the launch, Stacy's sold to PepsiCo for $250 million.
2:10 - Intro
4:14 - Starting out in social work
7:28 - Meeting Mark Andrus and working in food
13:07 - Moving to Boston and buying a food cart
18:05 - Starting to make pita chips
22:29 - Mass producing
26:10 - Money problems
30:00 - Marketing
36:11 - Scaling
38:13 - Competition
39:15 - Turning a profit
40:01 - Getting a divorce
43:43 - Growing
46:30 - Getting acquired by Pepsi
47:40 - A fire in the factory
49:32 - Life changing money
53:00 - Figuring out the rest of her life
55:30 - Hard work vs. luck
Brian Scudamore - 1-800-GOT-JUNK