Walkers is “Britain’s most irresistible crisp”. The brand was founded in 1948 in Leicester, England, by Henry Walker, and acquired by Lay’s owner, Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo, in 1989.
Walkers is best known for manufacturing potato crisps, and other, non-potato-based snack foods. They hold 56% percent of the British crisps market. The Walkers site in Leicester is the largest crisp production plant in the world, producing over 11 million bags of crisps per day, using about 800 tons of potatoes.
Walkers Crisps have a range of eleven flavours: Cheese & Onion, Ready Salted, Salt and Vinegar, Prawn Cocktail, Chicken, Beef, BBQ, Marmite, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Smokey Bacon and Pickled Onion. These are available in standard 34.5g packs, and 55g Big Eat packs sold mainly as packs for sharing. There is also a range of multipacks containing six, twelve, eighteen or 24 bags of crisps.
Walkers communicates the continued innovation of its product through television advertising and skilful use of the brand’s spokesman, Gary Lineker. He was retiring from his professional football career when the brand asked him to star in the first commercial “Welcome Home”, which centred on Gary returning to England from Japan.
Since 1995, Gary has featured in over 50 commercials which gently poke fun at his “nice guy” image, and over the years Gary has been joined by a host of celebrities including actress Emma Thompson, Lennox Lewis, Michael Owen and Des Lynam.
The Walkers brand is also famous for its in bag promotions. “Moneybags” was a successful and ground-breaking promotion which offered consumers the chance to win real money in packets of crisps. In sports, Walkers is a sponsor of Leicester City Football Club.