Banana Chips Side Hustle Now Earns R$200K a Year

How did Vanuza Ferreira turn banana chips into a R$200,000 business?

Vanuza Ferreira, 38, grew up eating green banana and yam snacks in Vale do Ribeira, São Paulo — a regional tradition she never forgot. In 2018, already living in Santa Catarina and working at a textile factory, she brought her homemade chips to the morning break. Coworkers loved them. To get around company rules, she split bags among friends and sold 20–30 packets a day at R$1.80 each. When that side income matched her salary, she knew she had a business.

What setbacks did she face before finding success?

In 2020 the business was registered as NC Chips under a partner's tax ID. The COVID-19 pandemic hit hard: social distancing killed sales and the family sold their motorcycle to cover bills, still ending up in debt. She moved to São Paulo in 2021, returned to Santa Catarina in late 2022, and joined a partnership in Corupá. That venture ended badly — she did all the manual labour but had no access to sales data, payments were delayed, and her partners used the time to copy her recipe and launch a competing brand.

How did VC Chips come back stronger?

In early 2024, Ferreira returned to a textile job, but resigned three months later to care for her son with a disability. To support the family she restarted production at home and promoted packets in local Facebook groups. In April 2024, the brand was officially relaunched as VC Chips — the initials of Vanuza and her husband and business partner Carlos Teixeira. The turning point came in May 2024: with a R$700 initial investment she landed a R$1,800 order from a client in Balneário Camboriú. Today VC Chips distributes thousands of artisanal snack packets to five cities in northern Santa Catarina, processing over one tonne of green banana per week (50–60 boxes). The first half of 2026 alone brought in R$170,000 in revenue, putting the business on track for R$200,000 a year.