In Business 1938 - 1973
Started on
Atwood Ave.
1435 E. Washington Ave.
Red Dot Foods of Madison, Wisconsin was founded in 1938, the same year as H.W. Lay
& Company in Atlanta, Georgia, and soon achieved comparable success. Red Dot’s founder,
Frederick J. Meyer, had been selling snack foods to grocery stores in Dane County as a
middleman since 1931. When potato chips began selling faster than any other product, he
realized that they were the snack food of the future. In 1938 he found investors to
purchase the latest in potato chip technology, a continuous potato chip making machine,
and a new enterprise was born.
Frederick J. Meyer, 1956. On May 5, 1961, Meyer sold his company to H.W. Lay & Company.
Despondent over the sale, Meyer killed himself four days later. In 1970 Lay’s sold the
Red Dot brand to the H.H. Evon Company in Little Rock, Arkansas, who discontinued the
product line and closed down the Madison factory in 1973.
Red Dot worked closely with the University of Wisconsin’s agricultural department to
create the perfect potato for chips. The University continued to do research in this
area after Red Dot folded and in 1990 introduced the Snowden potato, now considered the
ultimate chipping potato.
