The apéritif is an art of living. Rugby players are hardly the ones who will tell you otherwise. Which is why Louis-Matthieu Jazeix, a former professional rugby player who has passed through Mont-de-Marsan, Carcassonne, Suresnes and Anglet (among others), came up with an innovative idea.

The man now on the lookout for a new sporting challenge decided to call on Bur, a renowned Lyon artist, to launch a crisp brand whose packets are customised by the artist himself. Better still, Jazeix and his partner have put the emphasis on the local, on colour, on identity and above all on quality.

“Captain Chips” will soon be inviting itself onto your table. And judging by the designs, you may well end up collecting the packets…

IT’S RUGBY. – How did the idea of standing out through art come about?
Louis-Matthieu Jazeix: I work in wine, and wine means apéritif. Everybody eats crisps these days. That war of flavours, with very chemical products, broke my heart. I have an artist friend, Bure, who handles the whole artistic side. I told myself it would be incredible to make crisp packets with a real identity. We live in the Basque Country, so the idea of launching editions built around towns with a strong tourist profile, with that identity and visual side, was perfect. He followed me onto the project.

The aim was to source a genuinely high-quality product, which took time. I looked around in Spain, France and Italy. In the end it was a factory in Champagne that caught my attention. Their crisps have a Nutriscore of A and B. They are the only ones on the market with that, and a one-year shelf life. In quality terms, we will have the best crisp on the market, with a real potato taste and 30 % less fat than the average. We wanted to put a quality product forward, not just a nice visual. We found what I call a “small” farmer. In reality, it is two brothers with 600 hectares in Champagne. The product will be 100 % French, which was our wish. That quality was also necessary in order to be present in rugby stadiums. I was a professional rugby player, that link matters to me. And if on top of that we convey a sense of identity, namely the story of a club, of a town, like a mural you can read right around the packet… Job done.

With such a beautiful packet, people might not dare tear it open…
That is exactly the idea! Combining a popular product, the potato, eaten by everyone, whether you earn 1,000 or 20,000 euros a month, with a strong artistic side. Bur produces works that go from 2,000 to 10,000 euros. Transposing that art onto a product like the crisp is really smart. The idea, even after sleeping on it, would be to have a little corner in Biarritz with all the packets laid out like a mural on a wall. In 2-3 years, I hope we will have made several packets and travelled all over the place — that is more or less the idea behind the brand. The logo is a little stylised aeroplane in the shape of a crisp. We have registered the trademark and the patent across 27 European cities. The idea really is to travel, to use the rugby network we have both built, and to grow this project.

You mention travel, hence the name “Captain Chips”…
Exactly. Captain, like a flight captain taking you on board. A short video will be out soon in June: we are going to film the arrival of the packets using the aeroplane symbolism. I hope it creates a buzz. The idea is to bring people together around this project, a bit like rugby, to build bonds over the apéritif. And obviously, if we can expand internationally, we will not say no.

In concrete terms, when is the project going to launch?
I have only just received the packets. That will allow me to go and see the stakeholders, the distributors, so they can see the finished product. A tasting cannot be replaced by a verbal agreement. The goal is to be on the shelves for the summer, for the July tourist rush. Mid-June, late June, we should be in the small grocery shops, the restaurants, and some small GMS (large and medium-sized retail outlets, ed.), with the Biarritz, Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz type packets. We are also creating a more universal “Pays Basque” packet that will take in the region’s strong identity. I already have the agreement of the Intermarché chain locally.

Have you tasted them?
Yes, I went to the factory, I spent a whole day there, drove tractors, toured the entire farm. The crisp is thick, you get a real potato taste, it crunches, there are no crumbs in the packets… It is clearly a “premium” crisp. We are pitching at the same price base as Brets or Lay’s, give or take a few cents. They are not competitors, we are not on the same concept at all. But you always take inspiration from the best. A bit in the same spirit as Michel et Augustin, who started out with a small product and grew it.

Are different flavours in the pipeline?
The classic first. Then will come a Captain Chips with genuine piment d’Espelette. A more generic Pays Basque version too, namely a ridged crisp with salt and chilli. Three editions will come out with truffle. And at the end of the year, perhaps, a limited Bayonne edition with a sweet crisp, in a nod to the capital of chocolate. We will see how it goes.

If any distributors read this article and are interested, we are all ears!

How and when did the project come together?
From the inside, I had the feeling it was going at a snail’s pace. But in itself, it went very quickly. I got injured at the end of October, I had surgery at the end of last year. I had had this project in mind for more than a year. I put it all down on paper at the beginning of November with a friend, Sylvain Layrisse, who runs the restaurant Le Corsaire in Biarritz and who helps me with the management side. He also champions product quality, hence the premium positioning. The company was created in April. That is pretty short in the end. Now the challenge is to bring all the stakeholders together, to have the right distribution networks. The crisp is still the most consumed product in France since Covid. If any distributors read this article and are interested, we are all ears (smiles). We are not arriving as conquerors, we want to learn from everyone. We want a win-win!

Did belonging to a club help in your move into business?
I had taken a step back after my injury. During my career in Pro D2 and then Nationale, I had not had many injuries. Then in two years, I did my hand and my knee. That knocked my morale. The third child arrived as well, so I took time for that. I also have my job on the side. I am a sales manager in wine for the entire professional circuit, which is very demanding. The crisp side, I develop through my network, often in the evening or over lunch. The rugby network is kept alive thanks to that. Two or three clubs have already called me. We would love to have one or two Top 14 clubs as soon as next season.