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Microcap & Penny Stocks : TFRY (was FRYA) Tasty Fries, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: yardslave who wrote (2349)	4/23/2005 1:22:56 PM
From: desdev	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2405

I can only reply to what I know from the time we worked for Tasty Fries. Yes, there were working machines. When we started with the program there were 10 or 12 hand made prototype machines in various places in the US and overseas (one was in our shop). Our involvement was primarily taking the prototype parts and redesigning them for production. The first machines cost about 3X the production goal. We accomplished this over a period of 2 - 3 years (there were a lot of parts). Ed's basic design worked and there were very few functional changes. One example was a machined part that cost about $200. We designed it as an injection molded part that cost about $3.00. Other parts were redesigned using injection and rotational molding,and die casting. Materials included sheet metal,die cast aluminum, Teflon, and some pretty impressive plastics. I don't remember the tooling bill but it was well into six figures. We built a couple of machines using the first parts from the tooling and encountered the normal fit and function problems (we didn't have 3D CAD at that time - it would have helped). Something happened financially at that time and development stopped for a period. We never became fully involved again as the development and "production" moved, first to New Hampshire, and, then to California. I believe that all the tooling was moved there too. Ed started the program by visiting the Patent office and researching current and expired patents for processing potatoes. He found some WWII technology involving dehydrated potatoes that was developed for submarines. The process was just what he was looking for. He spent considerable time developing the proper "kernel" size so that the potato product would rehydrate properly. One of his competitors used a powdered potato, which would mot allow water to soak the product (it would puddle on the surface). Ed's ingredient was more like a rice kernel that would allow the water to flow around and soak properly in a short time. It was a simple concept that worked beautifully. These were real potatoes - dehydrated. There was no problem with them becoming rancid or spoiling if power to the machine was cut off. He had, I believe, a contract with Nestle for delivering the dried potato product by the shipload. Not unrealistic if one calculates the amount of product that would be used if several thousand machines were in service. When the fries were hydrated they were extruded into shape through a die. There were slight differences in their size to allow for different extrusion pressure from the center to the edges of the die. This was the level of thought put into the first prototypes. We didn't change any of Ed's basic design. We just made it ready for mass production at a target cost. Our involvement, as I said, ended when he moved to California. We understand that the tooling is all out there and that they made significant improvements towards simplifying the electronics. Why isn't it in production? I can't speculate. I'm a product guy and the financial ins and outs are beyond my comprehension. I just wanted to comment to those of you who don't believe that the machine really existed. It did, still does, and it works.