In 2022, hungover one morning on New Year’s trip to Miami Beach, Meta engineer Steven Rofrano saw his friend Seth Goldstein, then working in private equity, eating a bunch of “not very high-quality” tortilla chips. Rofrano, who always tried to eat healthy but never really loved the better-for-you snack foods that were available, was appalled. “It was shocking to me to find one of my friends eating this seed oil pesticide slop,” the 31-year-old Rofrano says, recalling that he went on to describe his perfect chip: no additives, no pesticides, fried in grass-fed and -finished beef tallow, and finished with sea salt. The problem was, it didn’t exist—so Goldstein bet him that he couldn’t make it.
Rofrano accepted the challenge. He soon began experimenting, frying organic corn tortillas in grass-fed beef tallow in a turkey fryer in his parents’ backyard and seasoning his extra crunchy creation with sea salt. Goldstein was impressed and the two decided to start a business.
They spent $8,000 from their savings on an industrial fryer, a tortilla chopper and a pouch-sealing machine. Their first official batch of Masa chips was produced in July 2022 in a 400-square-foot commercial kitchen that summer and they pre-sold them online. The chips sold out in one day.
After that initial release, Erewhon, the upscale health food chain in Southern California, reached out and Masa launched exclusively in its stores that fall. Within a few months, it was Erewhon’s top-selling chip.
But there still wasn’t a manufacturer that wanted to work with the duo. Most plants were set up for cheap vegetable oils (another name for seed oils) not beef tallow. They spoke to some 200 manufacturers and got 200 rejections
So the pair spent another $250,000 of their savings—“We had been working decent jobs for a few years. We had money to throw in,” Rofrano says—to build a small facility in New Jersey. Rofrano and Goldstein both grew up in New Jersey. Rofrano says that most of the funding they have raised since has gone towards building out their plant and expanding their manufacturing.
By 2024, Ancient Crunch (as the parent company is known) was bringing in an estimated $20 million in annual revenue, up 400% from its first full year in business. Its growth continued as Masa became a status symbol for a certain sector of wealthy, wellness-obsessed Americans. Its boldly colored striped bags (corresponding to flavors from Burlap & Barrel spice blends) are frequently spotted in the kitchens of MAHA influencers and the chips are often touted by Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson.
Today, Masa can be found in some 2,500 stores across the country–and is launching next month at Target’s California stores and nationwide at Whole Foods in August—and parent company Ancient Crunch is selling 500,000 bags of chips every month at $13 a bag. In just four years, the New Jersey-based business has grown to annual revenue estimated at $50 million as Ancient Crunch tries to build the LVMH of salty snack foods.
“We’re not trying to make healthy alternative versions of your favorite snacks. We are just making the best version of your favorite snacks,” says Rofrano, the CEO of Ancient Crunch. “It is arguably even more of a tortilla chip than, say, a Tostito is. If you were to get in the time machine and look back to the first recipe when that snack was created, what we produce is far more similar to that than what Big Food produces.”
And that comes at a price. A bag of Masa chips starts online at $13 but can be above $18 in some grocery stores. With prices two to three times the competition, Ancient Crunch could one day be quite profitable, with EBTIDA profit margins of 10% to 20%. That price helps to offset high shipping rates, the cost of doing their own manufacturing and ingredient expenses that are far higher than most snack companies: the business, for example, spends over $100,000 every month on grass-fed beef tallow. The business says it is currently unprofitable.
Crunch Time: Like Masa chips, Vandy Crisps promise “a crunch worthy of a Vanderbilt.”
Masa
Half of its sales are online, where order minimums start at six bags. Some 37% of total sales come from monthly subscriptions. “We have customers from 2022 who are still buying chips on the internet from us directly, and if you just think about how weird an experience that is—going to your Masa Chip’s website and buying a relatively expensive box of tortilla chips on the internet for four years straight, that’s loyalty,” says Goldstein, 30, the president of Ancient Crunch. “That’s shocking behavior.”
“Many people would consider our prices to be relatively expensive, and yet people have no idea how expensive it is to make this stuff,” says Rofrano. “The difference is certainly ingredient quality. Our ingredients are orders of magnitude better.”
As Ancient Crunch continues to expand, it will obviously require more capital. Forbes estimates an acquisition could be $200 million, based on the roughly 4 times revenue that PepsiCo. paid for grain-free tortilla chip maker Siete, for a total of $1.2 billion, in 2024.
There are only a few big food companies that could even buy Ancient Crunch. PepsiCo can’t acquire more chip brands due to the antitrust scrutiny it would attract from owning all of Frito-Lay, which includes Doritos, Tostitos, Cheetos, Lay’s, Frito’s, Sun Chips, and Siete. Campbell’s, which owns Cape Cod, Late July and Kettle, might be a potential suitor, but its stock is challenged, down 40% year-on-year. As is Utz, down 27%, and Kellogg’s, the owner of Pringles, down 34%. Hershey’s, up 5%, which owns better-for-you popcorn brands Skinny Pop and Lesser Evil, could be an option.
Rofrano and Goldstein still own a majority of the business and have retained 100% of voting control. They say the business is not for sale.
The rest is owned by investors, including Los Angeles-based The Family Fund, Boston-based Raptor Group and Chicago-based Tonic Ventures, which PitchBook has tracked as investing at least $4.5 million back in February 2024. But outside ownership is likely far higher. New York-based firm 4th & 1 Ventures joined during the latest round.
“We’ve been really deliberate about choosing compatible partners that have
Masa Appeal: “Many people would consider our prices to be relatively expensive,” says Rofrano, “and yet people have no idea how expensive it is to make this stuff.”
Masa
what they need from a governance perspective without the right to go ruin everything,” says Goldstein. “What we’re really paranoid about is having a capital partner who would pressure us to ever change the recipe or just do something that’s out of line with our core ethos.”
“The biggest challenge,” he adds, “has been coordinating with distributors to ensure ample product is available.”
Its playbook has worked so well that in 2024 the pair launched a line of seed-oil-free potato chips under the name Vandy Crisps (named for 19th century railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was famously finnicky about his chips) and a similarly healthy popcorn brand under the name Golden Age was announced in February.
Its Vandy Crisps follow the Masa model—they’re made with “naturally grown potatoes” that are “free of CIPC,” an herbicide approved for use in the U.S. but banned in the European Union since 2019. Bags promise customers “No seed oils, pesticides or artificial ingredients ever—a crunch worthy of a Vanderbilt.”
“You couldn’t fry a chip in vegetable oil 100 years ago because vegetable oils did not exist,” says Rofrano. “We are not making an alternative chip. We are making the right version of the chip as it’s supposed to be, and the virtue of that method, of course, is that it actually tastes like a chip.”
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2026/05/29/masa-ancient-crunch-rise-of-the-blue-chip-tortilla-chip/
