A Fitchburg factory with roots stretching back nearly 80 years is shutting its doors for good. Our Home, the New Jersey-based snack company that owns the site at 759 Water St., plans to close the facility on or around Dec. 15, putting 62 employees out of work.
The closure was reported by Worcester Business Journal, which noted that none of the affected workers are represented by a union.
A Chip Factory With Deep Fitchburg Roots
The site is best known locally as the former home of Wachusett Potato Chip Co., which moved its operations to Fitchburg from Clinton in 1947, taking over a former prison building in the city, per the seed reporting from Boston.com. Utz Brands later bought the Wachusett brand and its Fitchburg facilities in 2011, according to the Worcester Business Journal's reporting.
Our Home entered the picture in 2024, when it purchased the Fitchburg site from Utz as part of a broader transaction. That deal, worth roughly $18.5 million, also included an Utz facility in Berlin, Pennsylvania, the Worcester Business Journal reported. An SEC filing tied to the transaction shows the total consideration was $18.5 million, subject to customary adjustments, with the deal expected to close on April 22, 2024, and the companies agreeing to operate under a Transition Services Agreement for up to 12 months afterward, according to Utz Brands' SEC filing.
Part of a Wider Pullback
Fitchburg is not an isolated case. The closure is part of a wider shuttering of Our Home facilities in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the Worcester Business Journal's report notes, and the company also closed a factory in Las Vegas in August. In Berlin, Pennsylvania, Our Home began laying off its 96-person workforce in February 2026, with that facility also fully closing by the end of the year, according to Food Business News.
A snack manufacturing facility in Conover, North Carolina, is scheduled to permanently close by Dec. 18, resulting in 93 layoffs, per the Hickory Record. And in Nevada, Our Home permanently closed its northeast Las Vegas manufacturing plant on Aug. 25, laying off 61 employees after notifying state officials in a June 26 letter that, per the Las Vegas Review-Journal, did not provide a reason for the shutdown. Our Home acquired the RW Garcia brand and assumed Utz's lease there as part of a separate $182.5 million deal in 2024, the newspaper reported.
Company Footprint Keeps Shrinking
Our Home, led by founder Aaron Greenwald, manufactures brands including Food Should Taste Good, Popchips, Real Food From the Ground Up, Good Health, You Need This and RW Garcia, according to Food Business News. The company's acquisitions from Utz have coincided with Utz's own consolidation; Utz has said it now operates eight primary manufacturing facilities, down from 16 in 2021, Food Business News reported.
Real Food From the Ground Up did not respond to a request for comment about the Fitchburg shutdown. What remains clear is that another chapter is closing for a building that has anchored snack-food production in the city since the late 1940s, leaving 62 Fitchburg workers facing a mid-December deadline without union representation to negotiate on their behalf.
