Golden Flake Snack Foods is a producer of potato chips, tortilla chips, corn chips, cheese curls, fried pork skins, and other snack foods in the Southern United States.[1] It is now part of Utz Quality Foods.
History
The Golden Flake brand (originally known as Magic City Foods[2]) was established in the 1920s by Mose Lischkoff and Frank Mosher in a Birmingham, Alabama, grocery store basement.
In 1956, Sloan Bashinsky Sr bought Magic City Foods from his father and uncle. He changed the name to "Golden Flake" a year later and, in 1958 moved the production facility to its current 5-acre site. In 1963 he oversaw the acquisition of Don's Foods, a Nashville, Tennessee-based snack producer and distributor.[3] In 1968, the company went public, changing its name again to Golden Enterprises, Inc. It is no longer publicly traded today, and was listed in the NASDAQ under the symbol "GLDC".[4]
One of its most famous spokesmen was Paul "Bear" Bryant, the head football coach for the Alabama Crimson Tide.[5] For years, the potato chips, along with Coca-Cola, were marketed with the slogan, "'Great Pair' says 'the Bear'".[6][7]
On July 19, 2016, Golden Flake announced that it was being acquired by Utz for $12.00 per share in cash, representing a 71% premium over the average 30-day trading price of $7.00.[8]
