How a fussy customer led to the invention of a popular snack.

1 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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1:19

In this narrated YouTube segment, the speaker recounts a 1853 incident at the Moon Lake Restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York, where a dissatisfied patron repeatedly sent back his French‑fried potatoes for being too thick and not crisp enough. Chef George Crumb, frustrated by the repeated complaints, sliced the potatoes as thinly as possible and fried them to an ultra‑crisp texture, adding salt before serving them again. The customer loved the result, unintentionally creating what we now know as potato chips (crisps). The story, cited from the book The Art of Unexpected Solutions, is used to illustrate how customer complaints and accidental problems can spark extreme, innovative solutions that become successful products. The speaker concludes that recognizing and exploiting such unexpected opportunities can benefit both business and personal life.

Chapters

Something unusual happened at the Moon Lake Restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York State in 1853. A customer sent back his order of French fried potatoes because he said they were not crispy enough and they were too thick, and he sent them back again, again, and again every time the cook recooked them. And ultimately the chef there, whose name was George Crumb, became so exasperated with the fussy customer that he went to an extreme. He sliced the potatoes paper thin, as thin as he possibly could, and fried them until they were ultra crisp. And then for good measure, he threw some salt on and he sent them back to the unhappy customer to serve them right. To his astonishment, the customer was delighted and he had created something new, what we call crisps in the UK or chips in the USA. And that story, which is in this book, The Art of Unexpected Solutions, carries a lot of the characteristics of the unexpected, the accidental. Every time there's a customer complaint, every time something goes wrong, there's an opportunity for you to try something new. And sometimes when you try something new that's different and extreme, it really works well. And in this book, I'll tell you how to exploit the opportunities both in business and in your personal life.