Lay's CHOCOLATE-COVERED potato chip to be announced tomorrow

The world's largest snack maker is widening its own market by mixing sweet with salty in its snacks -- and is rolling out chocolate-covered Lay's Wavy chips for the holidays.


The chocolate-covered potato chip is going mainstream.


Lay's, the nation's largest salty snack maker, on Friday will announce plans to roll out next week Lay's Wavy Potato Chips Dipped in Milk Chocolate.


At $3.49 for a 5-ounce bag, the Lay's Wavy dipped in chocolate is just the latest in a flood of sweet and salty products that have caught the national taste bud in the past few years, from ice-cream stuffed with pretzels to pretzels coated with chocolate.

The chocolate-covered chip also ties in with a flood of seasonal, limited-time-only snacks that increasingly hit the market between Halloween and New Year's.

And both trends tie in to a third even larger trend: the overall increase in snacking. Some 43% of consumers now snack three to four times daily vs. 24% in 2009, according to Symphony IRI, the research specialist.
 

"Flavors are getting more sophisticated and complex,"says Tom Vierhile, innovation insights director at DataMonitor, the consumer products research firm. "We are seeing more products that may pair traditional flavor opposites"like sweet and salty, he says.