Look, I know these things are handed down from Mt. Olympus, but come on! $4.29 for a10.5-ounce bag? That’s like, what, two potatoes, a thimble-full of oil and a pinch of salt – a nickel at ruthlessly prices, in other words.
It’s obscene!
While that may be the price printed on the package, around here they are regularly (every couple of weeks, far a week at a time) on sale at 3 bags (any flavor) for $5; Only catch is you have to buy the 3 bags at the same time to get the discount.
Still, I imagine that not too many people actually end up paying the full $4.39 price, at least in this market area…
(and on the weeks that they are not on sale for the 3 for $5 deal, they are almost always on a “Buy One, Get One Free” offer)
I find them nasty, esp as compared to smaller boutique brands.
Mount Olympus? No, those would be Kettle Chips. Lays bob up through the muck after being exuded from Satan’s bum.
Oddly enough one of the best places to get deals on name brand potato chips and crackers is … the dollar stores. Some of these have grocery sections and the name brand chips (including kettle chips) are about half supermarket retail.
They used to have Lays chips here (in Australia*), and I loved them. But I haven’t sen them in years and years, and the alternatives are so disappointing in comparison.
*In case people still don’t know where I live
Lay’s is made by Frito-Lay, owned by Pepsico, which controls 55% of the domestic potato chip market. The price inelasticity is due to successful advertising and product differentiation. Frito-Lay products have brand loyalty and are placed on premium locations on grocery store shelves.
I’m trying to figure out the defunct competitor that started to eat their lunch in the late 80s?
As the weight of the chips keeps shrinking, now down to 10oz with some flavors, soon all you will have is a puffed up bag the size of a pillow with one chip inside.
Because they’re thicker and way saltier. Nothing else compares.
I’ve always said that every extra pound on my body is stamped, in purple letters, “Frito-Lay.”
Buy them on sale and try not to eat them all at once.
Er, for "ruthlessly"in the OP, read “wholesale.” It was my smartphone, Mr. Freud, honest it was!
In the grocery store they are often 2/$5 which isn’t bad, seeing as how they are over $4 at a convenience store. My favorites are the lightly salted, in the blue bag. Cut so thin you can almost see through them, light on the tongue in their potato goodness, I could eat a whole bag at a sitting. So I don’t buy them often, one bag a month is all I allow.
Man wants laid, gonna cost.
This. Check out the prices for Fritos. :eek:
I think Lay’s regular potato chips are just about the worst on the market. Utz and Herr’s are pretty horrible too. I don’t see why anyone would be willing to pay a premium on those.
Most likely (believe it or not) Anheuser-Busch.
In the late 1980s, A-B decided to go big into the salty-snacks market, probably realizing that it was a made-in-heaven complement to selling beer, and probably also realizing that Frito-Lay was the only other national salty-snack brand to speak of. They launched Eagle Snacks (the eagle being part of the A-B corporate logo), and spent heavily behind the brand for several years. They had a pretty full line of potato chips, pretzels, etc., similar to what Frito-Lay offers. Note that, while the Wikipedia entry indicates that Eagle Snacks were “distributed to bars and airlines”, they also were very prominent in grocery stores when they were first launched.
Eventually, A-B decided to pull out of the snack business, and sold the brand to Procter & Gamble (it’s since been sold off by P&G, as well).
Thank the ridiculously high price of TV advertising. Chips and Breakfast Cereal both rely heavily on advertising campaigns and its incredibly expensive.
Neither product costs much to manufacture. The real cost is packaging and advertising. But, I suspect there’s a high profit margin in Chips and Breakfast Cereal.
Lay’s potato chips are the thinnest, most easily breakable (and thusly crushed all to hell while being delivered to the store) chips that exist in the universe.
Kettle chips are the way to go. You can get all the way to the bottom and still have whole chips, unlike Lays, where you pretty much have to throw them away when the bag’s half full.
No no no. Advertising doesn’t raise your prices. The capital outlay is offset by increased sales, not increased prices.
I see this all the time on these boards, and it just isn’t true.