Chatham Pitcher, Partner Grow Sunflower Seed Brand Through Cape League Exposure

Scan the fringes of a baseball field right in front of the dugouts, and you’ll quickly realize that sunflower seeds are as much a part of the diamond as the pitcher’s mound or first base.

So when Oliver Pudvar and Chase Whitman, two baseball players at Champlain Valley Union High School in Vermont, had a business class project to come up with an idea for a company, their concept came naturally, given where they’re from and what they liked to do: maple syrup sunflower seeds.

Whitman’s family had a small-scale maple syrup operation as a hobby, and they thought the all-natural sugar angle would be a zig from the salty, artificial flavors (like ranch, dill pickle, barbeque) rife within the sunflower seeds industry. They started experimenting in Pudvar’s kitchen.

Only a few years later, Chip’s Sunflower Seeds has blossomed into a full-fledged brand. Pudvar’s tenure pitching for the Chatham Anglers this summer, bringing his and Whitman’s product to the Cape, has only catalyzed the growth of the company born from two baseball players trying to pass a business class.

“It kind of worked out perfectly,” Whitman said.

Whitman and Pudvar both hail from Shelburne, Vt., a town of about 8,000 people, a suburb seven miles south of Burlington. They grew up in the same neighborhood and took the same bus to school. They played sports together. 

The two became closer friends in high school as members of the baseball team. They were in the same class in 2022 when they received the assignment to come up with an idea for a business venture.

“We decided to connect it to baseball because that was something that we both liked doing, and it kind of fit in well with what we already enjoyed,” Whitman said.

Per the assignment, the students only had to create and layout the concept, but Whitman and Pudvar took it further (way further, as it would later turn out). 

“We used one of the class times one day to go to the bank and open up a business account,” Whitman said.

They began working on creating an actual product, to make their machinations of maple syrup combined with sunflower seeds into reality. It wasn’t pretty at the outset.

They first tried putting their homemade syrup in a bag, adding the seeds in and shaking the concoction. The result was a sticky mess into which no potential taste-tester was willing to insert their hand. They moved to a recipe wherein they put the syrup on the seeds and roasted them, which worked better, though the stickiness was still too much.

“We made really bad seeds for about two years,” Pudvar said.

After an extended period of research with trial and error, Whitman and Pudvar finally found their formula. The two entrepreneurs learned that they could boil syrup to a certain temperature, put the seeds in and stir. The syrup crystallized around the seeds, preventing the unwanted sticky sensation.

“We're not the smartest guys, but we figured it out, and we're not scientists at all, but we kind of used food science and a couple of our resources to figure it out,” Pudvar said. “We've got a pretty good product now.”

They called the company Chip’s, after Whitman’s nickname (He has a chipped tooth; Pudvar’s nickname is Ollie). The two equal partners are in lockstep that their original seeds have come a long way as a consumable snack.

“We aren't really chefs at all, so we didn't really know what we were doing there,” Whitman said. “So it was pretty shaky at the start, to be honest, with all of our flavors, but as time went on, we kind of tried out some new things and really solidified the recipe.”

Whitman went on to Bryant University, while Pudvar, a left-handed pitcher, began playing at Manhattan College. There, Pudvar won two pitch competitions (in the business sense), earning some coin for Chip’s and allowing the upstart business to grow, with more packaging and recipes.

They supplied their seeds, at orders of 50 to 100 pounds, from California. Pudvar later transferred to play at UConn. At a shared commercial kitchen in the vicinity of Storrs, Conn. and Smithfield, R.I. (where Bryant is located), Pudvar and Whitman would occasionally meet after class or practice to make some seeds. This was a more legit operation. They weren’t in Pudvar’s kitchen anymore.

What shocks people the most about Chip’s, according to Whitman, is that he and Pudvar actually make the maple syrup sunflower seeds. Most assume they just order them from somewhere.

“It's cool that we can kind of work on this in our free time and kind of control what we're making right now,” Whitman said. “So we're not some big corporation. We're just two guys, a little sunflower seed business, trying to get big one day. But we have a good small foundation, and it's nice being able to kind of control everything at this stage.”

Outside of being Whitman’s nickname, Chip’s also implies the company’s underdog, chip-on-the-shoulder origins. The game of baseball is rife with celebrated brands that came from humble origins, products fashioned out of hardscrabble ingenuity. 

Big League Chew, the popular bubble gum meant to resemble chewing tobacco, was thought up during the 1970s by a pitcher in a minor league bullpen. The entire sport, from the majors to the minors to the independents and everything between, prepares baseballs for use with the muck shoveled out of a secret spot on the Delaware River by one guy in New Jersey (look it up).

Is there a reason Chip’s Sunflower Seeds couldn’t be a Big League Chew or a Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud?

“I think it's kind of crazy when I step back a little bit, but it's definitely not at the point where I'm thrilled about everything,” Whitman said. “It's great what's happened, but there's still so much to do and learn.”

Pudvar’s summer pitching for the Chatham Anglers has certainly been critical for the brand’s growth. He’s served as an on-the-road marketer and salesman, dishing out bags of the seeds to teammates and fellow Cape Leaguers, filming videos of them trying the product for Chip’s social media.

“That stuff is massive, just because he's like the driver of the business, I feel like,” Whitman said. “It all kind of depends on him, just because baseball is such a big part of it. So it's like it works out so well that we're a company for baseball players, but he's actually playing baseball right now, and at a high level at the same time.”

Their strategy for Pudvar to take the seeds wherever he goes and subtly incorporate and share the product with their target audience, yet without interrupting his baseball career, seems to be working. Pudvar was named an All-Star this season. During the Cape League’s Fenway Day in early July, Pudvar even managed to snag Boston Red Sox outfielder Roman Anthony on the field for a quick taste test and Instagram video.

“I'm playing with my clientele, so that helps a bunch, and I have a bunch of connections within baseball, so that's kind of how I help the company,” Pudvar said.

While Pudvar has spent the summer barnstorming the Cape, juggling his baseball career with doling out bags of seeds to prospective customers, Whitman has been painting houses, working two part-time unpaid internships and taking care of the nitty-gritty of the Chip’s business: the taxes, finances, etc. 

The two would of course like the company to potentially turn into full-time jobs for them, but as it currently stands, they’ve got a lot else still going on in their young lives. In the meantime, the grind that got them out of Pudvar’s kitchen mixing syrup and seeds in a bag to Fenway Park having their product sampled by a star player will continue. Chip’s is in the process of moving into a co-packing facility in Vermont.

“There's a lot of uncertainty with what will happen next, but we'd love to continue this and see what happens,” Whitman said.