Barry C. Levin

 

Barry C. Levin, Chairman and CEO, Snak King Corp.

 

In 1979, Barry Levin took over a struggling snack company that was producing pork rinds in a cramped facility with only two employees.  From the start, Barry made sales calls, ran the fryer, operated the forklift and kept the books.  He was constantly on the lookout for more efficient ways to run the small plant.

 

Snak King expanded into a 50,000 square-foot plant and, in 1994, purchased its current 177,000 square-foot facility.  In 2004, Barry received a call that part of the roof of the plant had collapsed.  Debris crashed down onto $13 million worth of equipment in the company’s production area.  Friends advised Barry to take the insurance money and walk away.

 

Instead, Barry and his employees worked 24-hour days to get the plant back into operation.  Three years and more than $30 million later, Snak King now has the largest single-oven tortilla chip line in the snack food industry and its production capacity has doubled.  Barry believes Snak King’s success in a market dominated by larger companies is due to its superior products.  He follows the mantra, “If it doesn’t look good, the consumer won’t buy it; if it doesn’t taste great, they won’t buy it again.”