I Rant About Frito Lay

My chip of choice is FL’s “Wavy” style. The taste and texture is what drives me to them. Most everything else drives me towards other brands.

Frito Lay is the 900 pound canary in the salty snack room. I once made an offer to purchase a regional chip company, they did a respectable business, but our group knew in advance there was no way in hell we’d ever compete on any basis with Frito Lay.

They have been around since nearly the beginning of time; few people know it was actually a potato chip that Eve took a bite out, not an apple, as widely reported.

They dominate the category with product offerings in almost type of  salty snack you could crave – from chips, to popcorn, to pretzels, to nuts – and the offerings are getting wider by the day. They have a top-notch in-house direct to store delivery system.

Yet the one thing they can’t do well is deliver a bag of chips to me that isn’t a few whole chips and a bag full of crumbles. What’s the deal?

At $4.29 for 10.5 ounces, that comes out to nearly 41 cents per ounce, or $6.56 per pound, more than most cuts of beef. For potato slices….oil…..and salt…..in crumbles.

People in the industry describe chips as “dip delivery vehicles” – that’s why you see more thicker chips than previous. But how does FL expect these chips to deliver dip to my pie-hole if the chip isn’t large enough to dip into some ultra delicious sour cream product (try “Mexican style from Darigold“) unless my fingers accompany the chip into the dip because the chip is so small?

Burgerdogboy does NOT like fingers full of dip!

At that price, and with FL’s expertise, they should be able to deliver a bag of full size chips to me, no problem.  And why aren’t “Wavy’s” available in my area in small bags?  You fill the shelves with every single conceivable flavor except Wavys. Or Ruffles.

Our family chip of choice when I was growing up was a regional favorite called “Old Dutch.”  At the time, they came in a family sized cardboard box, with two cello bags enclosed.

That may be an archaic system, and it certainly would take more shelf space, but Mr. Frito and Mr. Lay, (and Mr. Pepsi)  can’t you figure out some modern-day equivalent in the packaging realm?  Something that delivers chips in their entirety to me?

You make oodles of money.  I know you spend millions on R&D.

But you fall down on packaging.  Fix it, please.

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