Walkers (snack foods)
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| Public limited company, a subsidiary of PepsiCo | |
| Industry | Snacks |
| Founded | 1948 (69 years ago) |
| Headquarters | Leicester, England, United Kingdom |
| Products | See below |
| Parent | PepsiCo |
| Website | corp |
Walkers is a British snack food manufacturer mainly operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Walkers was founded in 1948 in Leicester, England by Henry Walker, and acquired by Lay's owner, Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo, in 1989. It 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 and using about 800 tons of potatoes.
In the 1880s, Walker moved from Mansfield to Leicester to take over an established butcher's shop in the high street. Meat rationing after World War II saw the factory output drop dramatically, and so in 1948 the company starting looking at alternative products. Potato crisps were becoming increasingly popular with the public, leading managing director R.E. Gerrard to shift the company focus and begin hand-slicing and frying potatoes.
The Walkers logo, featuring a red ribbon around a yellow sun, is noticeably similar to Lay's. It derives from the Walkers logo used in 1990. The company is still a significant presence in Leicester. Gary Lineker, the Leicester-born former footballer, is now the face of the company, featuring in most of their advertising campaigns since 1995's "Welcome Home". The official website states that an estimated "11 million people will eat a Walkers product every day". The company employs over 4,000 people in fifteen locations.
In February 2006, Walkers changed their brand label and typeset. They also announced they were to reduce the saturated fat in their crisps by 70%. They started frying their crisps in "SunSeed" oil, as claiming the oil is higher in monounsaturated fat content than the standard sunflower oil which they had used previously, establishing their own sunflower farms in Ukraine and Spain to be able to produce sufficient quantities of the oil. Walkers updated their packaging style in June 2007, moving to a brand identity reminiscent of the logo used from 1998–2006.
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