What’s The Big Stink Over Covered Bridge Potato Chips?
Photo courtesy of iStock.
Not everyone is a fan of Covered Bridge’s line of artisanal potato chips.
The New Brunswick-based potato chip maker has angered residents in the small East Coast town where it produces its chips. They allege that the expansion of the company’s facility into a larger factory in their neighbourhood eight months ago is negatively affecting their quality of life.
Seventeen residents of Woodstock, N.B.—a town of just over 5,500 people—want to file a lawsuit against the company, claiming its chip factory emits an odour, is noisy and generates too much traffic in their residential area, which surrounds the industrial park where the factory is located.
Covered Bridge—which recently entered into a partnership with the Toronto Blue Jays— is no stranger to Woodstock. The company operated a warehouse in the town for years, and then repurposed it as a full-blown factory in September 2025 after its Hartland, N.B. factory burned down in 2024.
Covered Bridge executive vice president Brooks Dickinson told the Canadian Press last September that the property, which the company has owned for a decade, was “gutted it from top to bottom, inside and outside, to make it modern manufacturing facility.”
Residents, however, appear to have assumed the factory expansion was a stop-gap measure to keep the company in production and not a permanent fixture in the largely residential area. One of the residents who opposes the plant told the Canadian Press last week that the plant is “simply in the wrong place.”
The company's reported removal of a wooded area that once served as a buffer between the factory and residents may have made matters worse. In October 2025, after hearing local concerns, the town council said it was working with the company to restore this buffer zone, which is bylaw-mandated.
Chip maker says it's working with the community
Covered Bridge says it's working with the community to address their concerns. In a statement provided to Chatelaine, the company’s vice-president Brooks Dickinson said the company wanted to reassure its neighbours that they are “are committed to the plan of action set in motion last year” in consultation with two concerned residents and that the location is “operating in full compliance of all applicable municipal and provincial regulatory requirements.”
That proposed plan of action reportedly includes doing things like adding mufflers to “deaden outgoing noise” and building a “large (regulatory meeting)-sized fence in the open gap between our plant and the nearby subdivision, supported by a substantial landscaping investment including a wide variety of trees and bushes.”
Contacted by phone, lawyer Basil Chiasson, who is representing the residents in their application, disputes Covered Bridge's characterization of its efforts on behalf of the community. He says residents came to him three months ago after they felt they had exhausted “all reasonable avenues of discussion” with the company.
The small size of the town and the proximity to the operating factory is the greatest concern to the residents, Chiasson says. “Look out your window,” he said on our call, “that’s how close they are to the factory.”
The claim is under review
Whether residents can proceed to court is yet to be determined. Their application must first be reviewed by the Farm Practices Review Board, an oversight body for the agricultural sector that assesses and manages odour, noise and other disturbance disputes related to agricultural production.
According to Chiasson, the board has undertaken an internal review on the application, which was filed May 4. Next steps will see it sent to Covered Bridge for a response. Chiasson estimates residents could wait as long as next fall before the complaint moves forward, either in a hearing between the parties or in a decision about whether the claim can proceed to court.
In the meantime, Covered Bridge's line of popular chips will continue to be manufactured onsite. Good news for many fans of the potato chip brand—but a mixed bag for many of the factory's neighbours.
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Flannery Dean is a writer based in Hamilton, Ont. She’s written for The Narwhal, the Globe and Mail and The Guardian.
