Have you noticed Lay’s potato chip bags looking a little different lately? The iconic brand has just undergone its biggest rebrand in 100 years — and the reason might surprise you. Apparently, 42% of people who enjoy Lay’s don’t realize the chips are made with real, farm-grown potatoes. So now, “made with real potatoes” is printed on every bag, alongside pictures of actual potatoes. Which raises a fair question: how did we get so disconnected from the origins of one of America’s most beloved snacks? The answer involves a revenge scheme, a visionary California businesswoman, and roughly a century of innovation.
A Crunchy Origin Story
The earliest known written recipe for potato chips appears in The Cook’s Oracle, an English cookbook published in London in 1817 that became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. But the more colorful origin story belongs to culinary legend. According to popular lore, the potato chip was born in 1853 in Saratoga Springs, New York, when a chef named George Crum served the first plate of chips to the railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt — and not entirely out of kindness.
The story goes that Vanderbilt kept sending back his french-fried potatoes, complaining they weren’t thin enough. Fed up, Crum sliced a fresh batch paper-thin, fried them to a crackling crisp, and doused them in extra salt — fully expecting the guest to hate them. Instead, Vanderbilt loved them. The dish quickly became a local sensation, known as “Saratoga Chips,” a name that stuck well into the mid-twentieth century. It’s a great story, and food historians largely agree it’s probably more folk tale than documented fact — but it’s too good not to tell.
From Barrels to Bags
For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, potato chips were a restaurant delicacy, cooked fresh and served to order. As they made their way into everyday life, they were sold in bulk from wooden barrels or scooped out from behind glass counters at mom-and-pop shops. They were fresh, but fragile — and not exactly portable.
That changed in 1926, when a resourceful California entrepreneur named Laura Scudder had a better idea. Operating her chip business out of Monterey Park, California, Scudder pioneered the concept of pre-packaging chips in individually sealed bags, originally made of waxed paper ironed by hand into grease-resistant packets. The innovation was a hit. Customers loved the freshness and convenience, and the modern snack food industry was on its way.
If you’ve ever wondered why chip bags are only half full, there’s a practical reason: the extra air provides cushioning that prevents the chips from being crushed. The bags are also pumped full of nitrogen gas, which keeps the chips fresher before you open them. That seemingly empty space is actually doing a lot of work.
How Lay’s Became a Household Name
Lay’s was founded in 1932 by a salesman named Herman W. Lay in Nashville, Tennessee, who started out selling chips from the trunk of his car. In 1939, he purchased a struggling snack food manufacturer and renamed it the H.W. Lay & Company. By 1944, it had been simplified to “Lay’s Potato Chips” — and the brand made history by becoming the first snack food to advertise on television. Lay’s merged with Frito in 1961 to form Frito-Lay, and the combined company joined PepsiCo in 1965, cementing its place as a dominant force in American snacking.
The Flavor Revolution
For the better part of a century, the potato chip was a one-note snack: salty, crispy, and nothing else. That changed dramatically in 1954, when Irish crisp company Tayto introduced the world’s first seasoned chip: cheese and onion. It was a revelation. Four years later, Herr’s became the first American company to offer a flavored chip when it launched barbecue flavor in Pennsylvania in 1958 — kicking off an arms race of flavor innovation that shows no signs of slowing down.
Today, the most popular chip flavors in the United States are barbecue, classic salted, and sour cream and onion, with salt and vinegar, cheddar and sour cream, and dill pickle rounding out the top tier. Canada has its own beloved regional favorites, including ketchup and the eclectic “all-dressed,” which layers ketchup, BBQ, sour cream and onion, and salt and vinegar flavors all at once. In Japan, wasabi, soy sauce, pizza, and mayonnaise are among the most popular varieties.
A Snack Worth Appreciating
The scale of modern chip production is staggering. It takes roughly 1,000 pounds of potatoes to produce just 350 pounds of finished chips. And Americans consume over 1.85 billion pounds of potato chips every year, making the United States the world’s largest chip market by a significant margin.
So the next time you reach into a bag of Lay’s, take a second to appreciate what’s inside: a snack with nearly two centuries of history, born from a petty kitchen dispute, packaged by a pioneering businesswoman, and flavored by the creativity of snack makers around the world. Made with real potatoes — and now the bag will make sure you know it.