Potato Chips Made Hibbard Independent

 Potato Chips Made Hibbard Independent 

   ROY C. HIBBARD did not relish the long hours and uncertain income driving a taxi. He realized he was getting nowhere. So he kept his eyes open for some way to make extra money. He made many stops to pick up fares at beer taverns, and in this way became acquainted with the tavern owners. Sometimes they talked to him about their business in a general way. To make people drink more beer, he learned, salty food specialties, such as potato chips, were given free to tavern patrons. So Hibbard thought it would be a smart idea to supply taverns with potato chips. He obtained a machine that turned out a high quality potato chip, and made up sample packages which he left with each tavern owner he knew. His first sampling produced a total of fifty trial orders. The quality of the chips was excellent, and the day following he was gratified to secure reorders totaling seventy-five pounds of chips. Hibbard quit his job driving a taxi to devote his entire time to his potato chip business. Hibbard’s initial investment was about $100. He bought the machine on a deferred payment plan, paying $85 for it. Potatoes averaged ninety cents a hundred pounds, and grease for frying cost fourteen cents a pound in twenty pound cans. By setting the machine up in the basement of the apartment building where he lived, he had no additional rent to pay. He made good money right from the start. His success was in the selection of the right kind of potatoes. At first he used a thin-skinned cobbler, which is inexpensive, but he later learned that all potatoes do not fry into good chips. The more expensive Idahos, recommended by the maker of the machine, were found to be much more satisfactory. Hibbard figures the cost of frying potato chips at nine cents a pound and by bagging them in five-, ten- and twenty-cent sized bags, he averages fifty cents a pound on retail sales. Sales in bulk to taverns bring him thirty cents a pound. He averages a net daily profit of better than $11, and his business is steadily growing. A potato chip machine similar to Hibbard’s can be set up in your own home. It is operated from gas, and fries potato chips of uniform quality. Ready outlets are found in taverns, lunchrooms and restaurants, and you may wholesale them at fifteen cents a pound to grocery and delicatessen stores. When put up in bags, such as the five-cent bags, an additional charge should be added. 

Doll Hospital Pays for Operation 

   MOLLY WINDER , the wife of a textile salesman, had been in an automobile accident which had injured her right foot. An operation would cost around $800. How could she get that much money? Of course, there was her husband’s salary, but payments on a home, insurance premiums and living expenses, pretty well used all of that. Mrs. Winder had often dressed dolls at Christmas time for her friends’ children from the textile samples discontinued by her husband from his line. Perhaps making doll clothes was the answer. She found her friends quite willing to buy the doll clothes for their children’s birthdays and as gifts. Her doll clothes sold quickly because she patterned them after the current styles in women’s and children’s clothes. A doll dressed in the current fashion always makes a hit with children. She had started to make the doll clothes in September and in November and December she concentrated on getting as much business as possible for the Christmas season. It was at this time that she found herself not only dressing dolls for Christmas, but also mending them. The dolls brought in by the mothers would have a broken arm or leg, a scratch on the face, a cracked head or a badly torn wig. Of course, these damages would have to be repaired before the doll could be dressed. It was easy for her to make these simple repairs. A little glue here, a bit of sewing there, the wig recurled and the new clothes would make “Betsy Ann” or “Sally Lou” look brand new again. Molly Winder is the genial type of woman who has a large circle of friends and acquaintances and almost before she realized it, the word had gone around and she was in the Doll Hospital business. However, she did not stop at repairing dolls—toys of all kinds were brought to her to mend and even china and little pieces of brica-brac. She also found—perhaps “cultivated” would be a better word—a market for character dolls and dolls dressed in the costumes of the various nations. These dolls were raffled at church bazaars and charity affairs held by societies, lodges, etc. By the following June, Molly was able to make arrangements for her operation. She had enough money to pay the hospital bill and more than half of the doctor bill, Now that she had built up a good list of customers, the second Christmas was so profitable the work required all her time and she delegated the household activities to her eldest daughter of high school age. Mrs. Winder was fortunate, of course, in that she had most of the materials needed in her work and but little money had to be spent for supplies. However, even with the added expense for materials, operating a community hospital for dolls can be made a profitable venture. 

Brown Bread and Beans Pay the Taxes 

   THE woman who lives in or near a section of apartment dwellers will generally find a market near her home for breads, cookies, cakes and similar products if she but searches her neighborhood for prospects. One woman living on Chicago’s south side developed a market for brown bread and baked beans by calling on homes in her neighborhood on Friday afternoons. Many homes that serve baked beans, creamed codfish and similar Friday foods, find that brown bread is just the needed item to make a perfect meal. However, most women will not bother to make brown bread and it is one of those special foods that the commercial food firms have not been able to reproduce with all its fine flavor. She started out with the idea of selling brown bread only but the tie-up with baked beans was so obvious, it was not long before she was selling both. Her method of introducing the brown bread was to carry a small case similar to a typewriter case containing several whole loaves of brown bread and one sliced loaf. The slices which had been cut in half were offered to each prospective customer as a sample. The bread was exceptionally good as the sample proved and before long she had several Friday customers. The baked beans were deliciously brown and put up in brown earthenware of two sizes, small and large, depending upon the size of the family ordering. Most of the women welcomed the idea of a home-cooked meal without any of the fuss of preparation. They could arrive home from their bridge parties, put the pot of beans in the oven to warm, slice the bread, fix up a substantial salad, bring out the pickles and catsup and serve the dessert prepared in the morning before leaving for the party. Being a wide-awake person, this woman made up a list of foods with which brown bread tasted good, such as baked beans, codfish, potato salad, finnan haddie, etc. She also suggested it for the children’s lunches with a big glass of milk, as well as sliced, cut in circles or other fancy shapes, and spread with cheese, to serve at luncheons and parties. Her name, address and telephone number were typed by her daughter in high school on regular recipe-size cards and a list of the ways of using brown bread was typed on the back of the card together with prices. These cards were mailed to friends of customers (names she secured simply by asking for them), given to prospects who had shown an interest in her products, and to customers. She also mailed them to tenants in the buildings where she had customers. Incidentally, she never missed an opportunity to call on other tenants in a building where a customer lived. In addition to this type of business she opened up another field for her brown bread by calling upon the three hotels in the immediate vicinity, as well as selling four other hotels in an adjacent neighborhood that catered to more or less permanent guests who were fussy about their food. Her high school daughter and 12-year-old son delivered the orders near home while she herself drove the old family car and delivered the hotel orders and other orders outside her immediate neighborhood. As the business grew she began to put aside a tidy little sum of money which paid the taxes on her home each year and helped to dress the children as well as herself.