Smokey Dukes founders detail weeklong smoked-pretzel process and scaling to thousands of bags a day

Lance and Mari, a sibling team and co-owners of Smokey Dukes pretzels, told Hutchinson Economic Development how a backyard smoker and farmers-market sales evolved into a small manufacturing operation with automated packaging.

The business began as an experiment: "We had purchased a smoker just for fun... and then we decided to try some pretzels," Lance said, describing early backyard batches that generated customer interest at markets.

Mari recounted testing products at craft and farmers markets and said demand from a neighboring spice booth prompted them to pursue retail sales. "They were selling them and I was in my little booth and I would see these people walk by with our bags of pretzels and their comments are just amazing," Mari said.

The founders emphasized product differences and the time required to make them. "From start to finish, our batches usually take about a week," Lance said, and both owners pointed to the smoking process as what sets their pretzels apart. They listed flavors including original, dill, rosemary and a "Midwest spicy" blend, and noted flavor popularity varies by market.

On the production floor, Mari and Lance described three smokers running concurrently and a custom smoke room with an exhaust system. "We can do about 500 pounds of pretzels a day if we're running at full capacity," Mari said.

Packaging has scaled from hand-filled bags to an automated line. Mari said the new packaging machine runs about 12 bags per minute and, on a full day, "we can do between 3 and 4,000 bags if we run the machine all day long." The machine weighs, fills and heat-seals bags to specified sizes (examples cited: 4.75 ounces and 10 ounces), after which full pallets are shrink-wrapped for shipping.

Founders also described growth challenges: acquiring bulk ingredients can be difficult because some suppliers set minimum-order quantities the business cannot meet yet, and packaging large sample runs (they plan to produce thousands of one-ounce sample bags for an upcoming tradeshow in Las Vegas) has relied on family labor and volunteers.

Seppelt concluded the tour by thanking Lance and Mari; the owners said they value local financing and community support as they scale. The visit ended with the founders pointing to the machinery and packaging line that now allow them to serve retailers and prepare semi-load shipments to distributors.

Next steps: Smokey Dukes plans to exhibit at a national snacks expo and continues to increase production capacity while managing supply-chain constraints.