Afghan woman learns about potato chips on LI

"I can't believe I'm here in a potato chip firm," said Sora Stoda, 21, who came to Cutchogue from her home in Kabul, Afghanistan, to learn the craft of mass producing what some call snack food and others consider guilty little pleasures.

Standing in the North Fork Potato Chips facility Wednesday, Stoda said there's nothing frivolous about her dream of creating a potato chip manufacturing business back home - one that she expects to employ about 100 people to start and benefit potato farmers and other suppliers once she moves beyond the business-plan stage.

With chips in Afghanistan primarily imported or made on a small scale in women's home kitchens, "there's a huge market for this business," she said.

Stoda is one of 10 young Afghan entrepreneurs brought to the area by Business Council for Peace, also known as Bpeace, a nonprofit that gets some support from the U.S. Department of State to help entrepreneurs in conflict-afflicted countries establish businesses and create employment.

The organization "helps expand businesses to help expand jobs. More jobs mean less violence," said Toni Maloney of Water Mill, co-founder and chief executive.

Wednesday, Stoda learned the ropes from Carol Sidor, co-owner of Martin Sidor Farms, which makes North Fork Potato Chips. "The whole process was interesting," said Stoda, "from putting the potatoes into the machine for washing, up to packaging and putting in boxes." Her favorite flavors? Barbecue, sour cream and onion, and Cheddar onion.

Friday she'll be off to Foster Farms in Sagaponack for a similar mentoring session.

Also visiting Long Island in the coming days:

Ahmad Khalid Rahimi, 26, who runs his family's ice cream shop in Mazar, to visit Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton;

Ahmad Farid Poya, 25, looking to start a bakery in Mazar, to visit Tate's Bakeshop in Southampton;

Tahera Mohammadi, 28, looking to extend her Mazar-based consulting business, to visit Greg Ferraris, a Sag Harbor accountant.

Wendy Summer, a Bpeace volunteer who serves as Stoda's "advocate," identified North Fork Chips as a good learning environment, a small company that runs a bare-bones operation. Summer, founder of Warren, Conn.-based Zaanha, which markets textile products with a percentage of sales going to help educate Afghan children, told of her first meeting with Stoda in January when her "face lit right up" at the mention of chips.

As Stoda tells it, when she was 5 or 6, "I asked my mom and dad, 'Please buy some package of chips.' I was always asking for them. . . . Since that time I always thought I should establish a company."

Apart from the problems any small-business owner faces, she and the others in her group have special challenges setting up shop in Afghanistan, said Maloney, who points to safety concerns, corruption and illiteracy, not to mention dust. It's a "dusty country," she said, which makes it problematic to operate and maintain machinery.

Still, Stoda, a 2009 graduate of Kabul University with an economics degree, comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Her grandfather and father ran import-export concerns. And five years ago she and her father founded a logistics company that supplies equipment to the U.S. military.

Stoda said she expects to fund her chip business with loans and her own savings.

With a focus on problem-solving and sharing the pleasures of well-made potato chips, Stoda said, "I am going to have my dreams [turn] into reality."