Adweek Instagram

Why It Took Lay's 2 Years to Redesign a Bag of Potato Chips

A peek at the design process at PepsiCo's house of crunch

Multiple bags of Lay's potato chips in various flavors — With some 25 different Lay’s flavors in the mix, redesigning all the bags took months.Photos courtesy of Lay's

Brandweek will feature live discussions with marketing pros at ULTA Beauty, Converse, UPS and more. Meet us in Miami Sept. 11–14 to boost your business and elevate your brand.

Eighty-seven years ago, a Nashville entrepreneur named Herman Lay began selling chips out of the trunk of his Ford Model A. Things were relatively simple back then. Until Lay began popularizing his salty snacks around the Southeast, potato chips were a delicacy confined to the precincts around Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where (as the most credible story goes) a cook named Katie Speck Wicks accidentally dropped a peeled potato into the hot oil she was using to fry crullers.