For generations of children, school field trips to the Golden Flake potato chip factory in Birmingham were a rite of passage.

Sampling the warm potato chips fresh out of the fryer is an olfactory and taste sensation lost on the current and next generation of school children.

“It was a big deal,” said Julie McLaughlin, who was director of marketing for Golden Flake from 1987-2014. “They had waiting lists. You would have to sign up three or four months in advance. It was a good little tour. It took about 30 minutes. Then we caught hot potato chips coming out of the cooker. There’s nothing like a hot potato chip.”

Those who took the tour don’t easily forget it.

“All kids love chips,” said Sharlet Jackson, a 2nd-grade teacher at Center Point Elementary School who also taught at Inglenook and North Roebuck and has taken elementary students and a daycare center group to tour Golden Flake. “Mostly I remember the warm chips they let us taste. They gave us free chips at the end.”

It was a great learning experience for students, she said. “It gave them the hands-on experience of where the products came from.”

It was one of the most popular field trips in the region.

“We had people come up from Montgomery, Anniston and Tuscaloosa,” McLaughlin said. “It wasn’t just the Birmingham schools.”

Utz Brands announced this week it’s closing the company’s Golden Flake Birmingham manufacturing facility in July. The school tours already ended a few years ago, after Utz Quality Foods, based in Hanover, Penn., purchased Golden Enterprises, Golden Flake’s parent company, in 2016 for $141 million.

When the Birmingham factory closes, it will be the end of the golden era of Golden Flake, although Utz will still sell products under the Golden Flake brand.

“It’s disappointing,” said Steadman Shealy, a former Crimson Tide quarterback who co-hosted the final season of the Bear Bryant Show sponsored by Golden Flake, and is now an attorney in Dothan.

“They were just a great partner with Alabama and Coach Bryant,” Shealy said. “They were just a part of the team, we felt like. To me, Golden Flake is synonymous with Alabama and Coach Bryant.”

The announcement comes just as Golden Flake potato chips mark a century of existence.

“It’s a very sad day,” said McLaughlin, who still often speaks of the glory days in the present tense.

“May 1 is our 100th anniversary,” she said. “We all loved that company.”

Golden Flake began as Magic City Foods in 1923 in the basement of a Hill’s Grocery store in north Birmingham, with its “Golden Flake” potato chips being made, placed in hand-stapled bags and sold at the grocery, McLaughlin said.

Before she joined Golden Flake, she worked for Frank Taylor Advertising, which ran the Golden Flake account and worked on the Bear Bryant Show.

“It was wonderful,” she said. “I worked on the show eight years and then Coach Bryant passed away. He was the most charismatic man you ever met.”

From 1960 through 1982, Golden Flake sponsored the weekly “Bear Bryant Show” on Birmingham television every Sunday with Coca-Cola as co-sponsor, and the slogan, “Great Pair, says The Bear.”

Paul “Bear” Bryant, who became Alabama’s coach in 1958 and died in 1983, did every show with a bowl of Golden Flake potato chips on the set.

The show was legendary, and the chips followed suit.

“The first 10 years it was live from WAPI Channel 13 on Red Mountain,” McLaughlin said. “We would sit down at 4 p.m. and he would talk. (Channel 13) pre-empted the second NFL game to show our show, until NBC told them they had to carry both.”

The Bear Bryant Show had better ratings than the NFL, she said.

So, the show moved to Channel 6. “We came on at noon,” McLaughlin said. “We had a lot of complaints from churches because people were leaving early to go home and watch.”

The show included 40 minutes of play-by-play narrated by Bryant, and for those who weren’t at the game it was the only chance for fans to see the action. Most games were not televised.

“The reason it was so popular is because at that time you could only be on television one time a year,” McLaughlin said. “It’s the first you could see of the action.”

Bryant would also plug Golden Flake corn chips. “He had a hard time saying, ‘Crisp, Crunchy Corn Chips,’” she said.

“We didn’t know he was going to be such a big deal,” McLaughlin said. “We were a regional potato chip. When he started being nationally known and winning national championships, it reflected very well on us.”

Bryant endorsed the chips partly because of his friendship with the Bashinsky family.

Leo Bashinsky and his brother-in-law Cyrus Case bought the company in 1946. Leo’s son, Sloan Bashinsky Sr., bought Magic City Foods from his father and uncle in 1956 and changed the name to Golden Flake. The sponsorship of the Bear Bryant Show was a cultural turning point.

“Coach Bryant would talk about five minutes, then we’d go to a one-minute commercial for Golden Flake,” McLaughlin said. “Coke would run their national commercials, which would make ours look rinky-dink, but we had the greatest man endorsing us.”

In addition to flavored chips such as Sweet Heat, cheese puffs, cheese curls, tortilla chips and snack crackers were made at the historic Golden Flake factory in Birmingham and shipped throughout the Southeast.

People will still be able to get Golden Flake products, they just won’t be made at the Birmingham factory after this summer.

“It breaks my heart,” McLaughlin said. “We loved that company. That was my life. It breaks my heart that they’re stopping production here.”

The decision means about 175 employees will be laid off from the work force of 275.

Others will work in distribution. Utz last year announced plans to build a 90,000-square-foot distribution warehouse on Acipco Industrial Drive in Birmingham.

“The Golden Flake brand remains an important part of Utz’s portfolio, and our product offerings and partnerships under this banner are not changing,” Utz Foods Vice President Kevin Brick said. “We will continue to have a presence in Birmingham and will stay an active part of the community.”

Jackson, the teacher, said she’s sad to hear the factory’s closing. “That’s a part of our history,” Jackson said. She’ll never forget the chip factory tours. “I probably have the pictures somewhere,” she said.

Campbell Scott, a nurse practitioner for Cahaba Medical Care, remembers going on a field trip to Golden Flake as a Mountain Brook Elementary School student in the 1990s. “We got to try a chip on each conveyor belt,” she said. “They were warm.”

That memory stayed with her as she put together guest baskets for out-of-town guests at her wedding in 2016. “Golden Flake was in the welcome baskets,” she said. “It was nostalgic. It’s part of my history. I wanted to introduce people to a little bit of Birmingham.”