Walkers (snack foods) facts for kids
Walkers Salt and Vinegar flavour (pictured) were launched in 1967
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Trade name
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Walkers |
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Formerly
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Food |
| Founded | 1948 |
| Headquarters |
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England
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Area served
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| Products | Snack foods |
| Brands |
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| Parent | Pepsico Holdings |
Walkers is a British company that makes snack foods, especially potato crisps. It mostly sells its products in the UK and Ireland. In 2013, more than half of all crisps sold in Britain were Walkers!
The company was started in 1948 in Leicester, England, by Henry Walker. In 1970, the Walker family sold the business. Later, in 1989, Walkers became part of PepsiCo, a big American food company that also owns the snack brand Frito-Lay.
The Walkers factory in Leicester makes over 11 million bags of crisps every day. They use about 800 tons of potatoes daily! It takes about 35 minutes for a potato to become a bag of crisps, from when it arrives at the factory until it's ready to be sent out.
Walkers makes crisps in many different flavours. The three most popular are:
- Cheese and Onion (first made in 1954)
- Salt and Vinegar (first made in 1967)
- Ready Salted
Other popular flavours include Roast Chicken, Prawn Cocktail, Smoky Bacon, and Tomato Ketchup.
The famous former footballer Gary Lineker, who was born in Leicester, has been the face of Walkers since 1995. He has appeared in many of their TV adverts. Walkers also sponsors big football events like the UEFA Champions League and the Super Cup in the UK and Ireland. In 2019, the 1990s pop group Spice Girls even appeared in a Walkers advert!
Since 2008, Walkers has run a fun competition called "Do Us a Flavour." They ask people in Britain to invent new crisp flavours. Six of the best ideas are chosen and sold for a short time. Then, people vote for their favourite, and the winning flavour might become a permanent one. In 2018, Walkers launched six new flavours to celebrate their 70th birthday, with each one representing a different decade.
Contents
How Walkers Crisps Began
In the 1880s, Henry Walker moved to Leicester and took over a butcher's shop. After World War II, there was a shortage of meat in the UK. So, in 1948, the company started looking for new products to make. Potato crisps were becoming very popular. This led the company's boss, R.E. Gerrard, to start slicing and frying potatoes by hand.
Before the 1950s, crisps were usually sold without flavour. Companies like Smith's of London sold plain crisps with a small sachet of salt inside. Walkers' first crisps in 1948 were also just salted.
In 1952, scientists won a Nobel Prize for inventing a way to separate chemical compounds. This helped food scientists create new flavours. In 1954, the first flavoured crisps were made by an Irish company called Tayto, which added cheese and onion seasoning during production.
Later that year, Walkers introduced their own Cheese and Onion flavour. This was inspired by the popular Ploughman's lunch. In 1967, Salt and Vinegar crisps were launched, inspired by the UK's love for fish and chips.
Over the years, Walkers introduced more flavours like Prawn Cocktail (inspired by the popular 1970s starter) and Roast Chicken (inspired by the roast dinner).
Walkers Today
The Walkers logo, with a red ribbon around a yellow sun, looks a lot like the logo for Lay's crisps. This is because both companies are owned by PepsiCo.
Walkers is still a very important company in Leicester. Gary Lineker, the famous footballer from Leicester, continues to be the face of the company. In the 1990s, Walkers even sold special limited edition crisps called "Salt and Lineker" and "Cheese & Owen," featuring Gary Lineker and fellow footballer Michael Owen.
Walkers' website says that about 11 million people eat a Walkers product every day. The company employs over 4,000 people across 15 locations in the UK.
In 2006, Walkers changed its packaging and announced it would reduce the amount of saturated fat in its crisps by 70%. They started frying crisps in "SunSeed" oil, which they said was healthier. They even grew their own sunflowers in Ukraine and Spain to make enough of this oil.
Many Walkers brands used to be sold under the Smiths Crisps name. After PepsiCo bought Walkers, the Smiths brand became less important. Some products like Frazzles and Chipsticks still use the Smiths name.
To keep their crisps fresh, Walkers started using foil bags in 1993. From 1996, they began filling the bags with nitrogen gas instead of air.
Popular Products and Flavours
Core Crisps
Walkers' most common crisp flavours are:
- Ready Salted (red packet)
- Salt & Vinegar (green packet)
- Cheese & Onion (blue packet)
- Smoky Bacon (maroon packet)
- Prawn Cocktail (pink packet)
Other flavours include Beef & Onion (brown), Marmite (black), and Worcestershire sauce (purple).
There's a common debate in the UK about Walkers' Salt & Vinegar and Cheese & Onion packet colours. Most other crisp brands use blue for Salt & Vinegar and green for Cheese & Onion. Walkers has always used green for Salt & Vinegar and blue for Cheese & Onion. This might seem confusing because Walkers became the most popular brand in the UK, overtaking Golden Wonder which used the opposite colours.
Walkers has also made special limited edition flavours. For example, in 2016, they made "Winners - Salt and Victory" crisps to celebrate their home team, Leicester City, winning the Premier League. Earlier, they gave out "Vardy salted" crisps to fans, featuring the image of the team's striker.
Other Snack Lines
Walkers makes many other popular snacks besides their main crisps:
- Baked (a crisp range)
- Crinkles
- Deep Ridged (now Max Double Crunch)
- Extra Crunchy
- Lights (low fat crisps)
- Max
- Pops
- Salt 'n' Shake
- Sensations (a premium range)
- Squares
- Sunbites (wholegrain snacks)
- Hoops and Crosses
- Chipsticks
- Doritos
- French Fries
- Frazzles
- Mix-Ups
- Quavers
- Monster Munch
- Sundog Savoury Popcorn
- Snaps
- Twisted
- Wotsits (including Wafflers)
In 1997, Walkers took over making popular snacks like Quavers and Monster Munch. In 2003, they also started making Wotsits. In 2007, Walkers launched Sunbites, a healthier range of snacks made with whole grains.
In 2008, Walkers started their "Do Us a Flavour" competition. The winning flavour in 2009 was "Builder's Breakfast." In 2010, "Roast Beef & Yorkshire Pudding" won the "Walkers Flavour Cup."
In 2014, Gary Lineker launched another "Do Us a Flavour" competition. People had to pick one of Walkers' British ingredients as a base and create a new flavour. The winner received £1 million!
In 2015, Walkers ran a "Bring me Back" campaign, bringing back old favourite flavours for a limited time. People voted, and "Beef and Onion" was chosen to return permanently.
In 2016, Walkers launched a "Spell and Go" competition. This competition caused some complaints because customers found it very difficult to win.
In 2022, Walkers searched for the best heart-shaped crisp, offering a £100,000 reward to one winner. In 2024, they launched three limited edition vegan flavours for Veganuary.
Litter and Recycling Efforts
Crisp packets, including Walkers', have been a common type of litter found on UK streets. In 2018, people protested to encourage Walkers to change its packaging because of plastic pollution. Some campaigners even sent empty crisp packets back to Walkers by mail!
In December 2018, Walkers started a recycling scheme for crisp packets. Within three months, over half a million empty packets were recycled. However, people in the UK eat billions of crisp packets each year, so there's still a lot more to do to recycle them all.
See also
In Spanish: Walkers para niños
