Whether you’re tailgating before a football game or searching for a late night study snack, potato chips satisfy almost any hunger. Make these potato chips blue and white and you’ve got a hit for Penn Staters everywhere.

Deanna Spaniel and Ben Nason own Blue and White Chips and produce these all natural blue and white potato chips. The duo recently won the Ag Springboard Competition and $7,500 to launch their business in State College.

Spaniel is majoring in agricultural business while Nason is majoring in horticulture. Spaniel has been heavily involved in student entrepreneurship since she first arrived at Penn State.

“This is not my first business,” Spaniel said. “I own several different types of businesses…from the time I started school until now I’ve had a catering company, I owned my own restaurant which I opened at 22, and now the potato chip company.”

While Spaniel is well-versed in the business world, she is also no stranger to college life. “This is actually my fifth college degree,” Spaniel said. Her other degrees are in culinary arts, baking and pastry, restaurant management, and dietary management, so a degree in agricultural business will round out her education.

Although Spaniel and Nason now privately own the company, Blue and White Chips originally started out as a university research project. “We started that research in January of 2015 and worked through the whole way until May,” Spaniel said. “At the end of May, Risk Management thought that it was too big of a project for the university to take on.”

The university then passed Blue and White Chips to Spaniel and Nason. After investing so much time and effort into the project, they gladly accepted the offer, and their vision for the future of the company is bright.

“I probably put in almost 1,000 hours of work,” Spaniel said. “We were talking to almost 100 students a week, anywhere from two to 10 business professionals in the fields. By the time May came around, we had so much work invested and so much time that it would have been really hard to let it go.”

As for expanding the company beyond State College, Spaniel explained that they have colors ranging from bright pink to black to fit in with any school that wants them. “From here, we can expand to many other universities and schools,” Spaniel said.

Blue and White Chips is a growing business venture for Nason and Spaniel, one that they are very excited about. After winning the Ag Springboard Competition, they hope to grow and prosper in State College selling their delicious, all-natural blue and white potato chips.

“You wear blue and white for a football game, you show that in your everyday life, it’s part of who you are,” Spaniel said. “Why not be able to eat that as well?”