Beanfields is an artisan bean chip for potato-skeptics and keto/paleo snackers like myself and 14 other people. Its audience is relatively small, with about $11 million in gross sales last year. You can typically find Beanfields at chichi high-priced LA grocery stores like Lassens, Whole Foods and the unpronounceable Erewhon.
Non-potato chips like Beanfields appeal to folks who stumbled onto too many articles about acrylamide and wanted to find some potato substitute that less carcinogen study articles have been written about. This is not to say that Beanfields have no acrylamides, but more to say that biohackers and health nuts have been sufficiently scared off of potato chip binging, but perhaps are not ready to substitute them with bug food. But, to the rare Beanfields fan, it isn’t just about not wanting to eat mashed up crickets. Beanfields are actually an absurdly high quality, low sugar snack. And they are addictive.
Where did Beanfields go?
At some point in the past two months, Beanfields stopped showing up on alternative chip shelves. In a few weeks’ time, it became more scarce than baby formula. For a borderline OCD keto guy, this represented an opportunity to canvass the neighborhood’s high end grocery stores and probably secure their secret stash. Except that there was no secret stash. Nobody had it in stock. Other than the occasional throw away jalapeno or sour cream flavor, no stores had it, and no store managers had any answers.
Supply chain issues or administrative incompetence?
I called Beanfields home office, and heard this voice message:
“Hello, you’ve reached Beanfields’ customer service desk. We’ve been experiencing product shortages, due to a number of issues, including supply chains. We’re happy to report we’re now back on track and in full production mode.“
I wonder what the other “number of issues” entail. Perhaps something having to do with the Beanfields company’s acquisition by Boosh Plant Based Foods in February? Did Boosh take over Beanfields and decide that the bean chip truck drivers were an unnecessary extravagance? “Let them walk the chips to vendors,” exclaimed thrifty Boosh CEO Jim Pakulis.
Without any further answers, keto-gamers like myself can do little but shake our fists in the air at Boosh Plant Foods while sadly eating crumbly kale clusters in the corner.
I’m going to end this piece of investigative chip journalism with an emotional plea to Boosh to get their shit together…
My children love Beanfields so much, they think they’re just regular chips.
Beanfield lifers know that once you eat a Beanfield, you never go back. Beanfields bean chips have become such a fixture in my household that my 3 year old refers to them as simply “Red Chippies.”
“Can I have more Red Chippies, Daddy?”
“What do you want for lunch, Julian?”
“I want…. Red Chippies.”
When we pass them among the ‘alternative chips’ at the supermarket, the children scream with glee, “Red Chippies! Please daddy, can we buy two of the Red Chippies?”
Like Oliver Twist naively asking for more gruel, my children have been asking for Beanfields for weeks. We can only ply them with Hippeas chickpea puffs for so long. They are discerning and know the difference.
Help me Boosh Plant Based Foods, you’re my only hope.
*2023 Update
Well, things certainly have not improved on the Beanfields production front. For a while, only the sour cream and onion flavor was available in all of the usual health food carriers. Now? I haven’t seen a bag of fresh Beanfields in months.
With a plummeting stock price (now at 7 tenths of a cent) and a recent announcement that Boosh Plant Based Foods doesn’t feel like submitting its obligatory financial paperwork, it seems like the final death knell for old Beanfields. The director of the company, Mike Lund, has resigned his post – and my children’s memory of their tasty red chippies is fading by the day. To paraphrase Casey at the Bat:
Oh, somewhere in this flavoured land the sun is shining bright,
The Beanfields are plentiful, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere moms are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Booshville—Mike Lund has struck out.
