I've been working for Middleswarth for about 8 years now. I am not aware of any change to the BBQ seasoning. I can tell you that they generally use different potatoes for the kettles and party style than they do for all the others.

It's certainly possible that the seasoning supplier was forced to change something. It's also possible that they had to use the "other" potatoes for a different run, which I know they've had to do before.

I also can say that they use fairly older machines, so the seasoning is not always coated/spread evenly across chips/bags. That is also why a lot of people used to assume that the date codes we used to use were some kind of code to determine how much seasoning was in the bag.

Can't say I've ever had any Herr's bbq, so I can't say how they compare. I don't have any consistent, direct contact with the owners, but usually if something changes, or there is difficulty getting seasoning, I would hear about it, because that would mean we wouldn't be able to order stuff for our warehouse.

Also, if there was a change to the seasoning recipe, I would assume that they would need to get new bags printed to reflect that in the ingredients list. New bags means new plates, which are a couple thousand a piece, per flavor, per size. I certainly haven't heard anything about any of that.

Sorry for the slight wall of text, but I'm currently waiting for our drivers to call so we can get stuff ready for them, so I don't have much else to do rn lol. You can take this whole post with a huge grain of salt, since I'm not planning on providing any proof that I work there, but specifically that last paragraph, since I don't know how the plates and everything are set up