British Crisps Explained: What Americans Need to Know

In the UK, what Americans call chips are called crisps. The thin, bagged, snack-sized potato snacks. What Brits call chips is what Americans call fries. British crisps come in flavours that do not exist in America, including prawn cocktail, roast beef, and pickled onion. The UK’s biggest crisp brand, Walkers, is made by the same company as Lays. You can buy British crisps in the US right now via Amazon.

If you have ever visited the UK and stood confused in a snack aisle wondering why everything says “crisps” on the bag, you are not alone. Every American asks the same question. British crisps are not an exotic niche product. They are what you already know as chips, just with a different name, different flavours, and a history that predates most American snack brands by decades.

This guide covers everything: the terminology, the brands, the flavours that will surprise you, and how to buy them without leaving the United States.

What Are Crisps? The Chips Problem Explained

The confusion starts with the word itself.

In America, “chips” means the thin, crispy, bagged potato snack. A bag of Lays. A tube of Pringles. What you eat at a desk or open at a party. In Britain, “chips” means something else entirely: thick-cut, hot, fried potatoes. The kind that come with fish. What Americans would call steak fries or thick-cut fries.

The thin, bagged snack? That is a crisp.

How the two countries ended up with opposite words

Nobody planned this. The two food traditions developed separately. Britain had its own crisp industry from the early 20th century, starting with Smith’s Crisps in 1920, long before American-style chips crossed the Atlantic in any meaningful way. By the time British consumers were familiar with the American word “chip,” it already meant something hot and fried. The thin bagged snack needed its own word. “Crisp” stuck, and it has never been replaced.

The practical result for American visitors

Order “chips” in a British pub and you will get thick fried potato wedges. Ask for “crisps” at a newsagent and you will get what you recognise as a bag of chips. Ask for “fries” in a fast food restaurant and you will be fine. That word translates.

The word “crisp” itself is fairly self-explanatory once you know it. The snack is thin, light, and snaps when you bite it. Whether fried or baked, that texture is the defining quality.

Walkers and Lays: The Same Company, Different Name

This is the thing that surprises most Americans when they hear it.

Walkers, the UK’s best-selling crisp brand, is owned by PepsiCo. The same company that owns Lays, the best-selling chip brand in the United States. They are not competitors. They are siblings, operating in different markets under different names. We have a full article on why Lays is called Walkers in the UK if you want the full story, but the short version is this: PepsiCo acquired Walkers in 1989, and at that point the Walkers brand already had decades of recognition in Britain. Throwing it away to rebrand as Lays would have been a bad commercial decision. So Walkers stayed Walkers.

PepsiCo owns both

Lays was created in 1932 by Herman Lay in Tennessee. Walkers started in Leicester in 1948. PepsiCo eventually brought both brands under the same roof through its Frito-Lay division, which now owns Doritos, Cheetos, and most of the major American snack brands you already know.

If you want to go deeper on the ownership, who owns Walkers Crisps covers the full corporate history.

Why Walkers and Lays taste different

They are not the same product. PepsiCo adjusts recipes for different markets. UK Walkers are typically less salty and slightly lighter in texture than American Lays. The base potato content, the frying method, and the general production approach are similar, but the seasoning levels and specific flavouring blends differ. If you eat a Walkers Ready Salted next to a bag of Lays Classic, the Lays will taste saltier and denser. The Walkers will feel thinner and more subtle.

Neither version is the better one. They are calibrated for what each market expects.

The British Crisp Brands You Need to Know

The UK crisp market splits largely between two companies: PepsiCo (through Walkers) and KP Snacks (owned by German company Intersnack). Between them, they make most of the brands you will find in a British supermarket.

Walkers brands (PepsiCo)

Walkers are the core range. Ready Salted, Cheese and Onion, Salt and Vinegar, Prawn Cocktail, Smoky Bacon. Standard potato crisps. The Walkers range is in every supermarket, every corner shop, every service station in the country.

Monster Munch are baked corn snacks shaped like monster feet. The flavours are Pickled Onion, Flamin’ Hot, and Roast Beef. Monster Munch is made by Walkers and was formerly made by Smiths. The Pickled Onion flavour has a sharp, vinegary hit that Americans tend to either love immediately or find overwhelming. There is no in-between reaction.

Wotsits are puffed cheese snacks. The closest American equivalent is Cheetos, but Wotsits are lighter, less aggressively orange, and dissolve slightly differently. Made by Walkers/PepsiCo, same corporate family as Cheetos.

Quavers are thin, curly cheese crisps. Very light, almost airy. More delicate than Wotsits. Popular with people who want something with cheese flavour but less intensity.

Frazzles are bacon-flavoured corn snacks shaped like rashers. Bright pink. Look alarming. Taste genuinely good. A classic British newsagent snack.

KP Snacks brands (Intersnack)

Hula Hoops are ring-shaped potato and corn snacks created in 1973 by KP Snacks in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. The signature move is putting them on your fingers before eating. This is not ironic. British people of every age do it. The original salted version is the classic, though Hula Hoops come in several flavours. Made by KP Snacks, owned by Intersnack.

McCoy’s are thick, ridged potato crisps. The British market’s answer to Ruffles, though the flavours lean British (Flame Grilled Steak, Sour Cream and Onion, Salt and Malt Vinegar). Considerably crunchier and more substantial than standard Walkers.

Skips are prawn cocktail-flavoured snacks with a unique texture. They dissolve almost instantly in your mouth, which sounds odd and feels even odder the first time. They are extremely popular. Skips are described by KP as “uniquely fizzy, light, melt-in-the-mouth.” One Pound Crisps

Pom Bears are bear-shaped potato snacks. Pom-Bear is part of the KP Snacks portfolio, owned by Intersnack. Very light, simple flavouring, popular with children. The bear shape is unmistakable.

Space Raiders are alien-shaped corn snacks, sold individually or in multipacks. Originally priced at 10p per bag for decades, which made them an institution among British schoolchildren.

Nik Naks are irregularly shaped corn snacks with intense flavouring. The Nice N Spicy variety has a sharp, tangy heat to it that sits unlike any American equivalent.

British Crisp Flavours That Do Not Exist in America

This is where the British crisp market genuinely differs from anything in a US supermarket. Flavour innovation in the UK has taken a different path, and some of the standard British crisp flavours are completely unknown in America.

Prawn Cocktail. The most infamous one. Prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps smell strongly of seafood and have a sharp, tangy, slightly sweet flavour based on the prawn cocktail dipping sauce that has been popular in the UK since the 1960s. To British people, this is as normal as Sour Cream and Onion. To most Americans, the reaction on first opening the bag is a strong and specific kind of confusion. They are excellent.

Roast Beef. A standard flavour on Monster Munch and on Walkers crisps. The flavouring is designed to replicate the smell and taste of a Sunday roast. Not smoked BBQ beef in the American style. Properly British roast dinner beef.

Pickled Onion. Sharp, vinegary, and very strong. Monster Munch Pickled Onion is arguably the most iconic single flavour in British crisp history. Nothing like this exists as a mainstream American chip flavour.

Marmite. Marmite is a yeast extract spread that divides Britain into two camps. The brand’s own slogan is “love it or hate it.” Marmite-flavoured crisps are a real, popular product. The flavour is intensely savoury, salty, and unlike anything in the American snack market.

Roast Chicken. A standard supermarket flavour in the UK. Reasonably close to what it sounds like. Not Buffalo Chicken. Not BBQ Chicken. Roast chicken, the kind you would have on a Sunday.

Salt and Vinegar (the British version). Yes, this exists in America. The British version is more aggressively vinegary. Significantly more. The first experience of a British Salt and Vinegar crisp can be genuinely eye-watering if you are used to the American version.

What Makes British Crisps Actually Different

Beyond the flavours, there are structural differences in how British crisps are made and sold.

Also Worth Reading

British vs American Snacks: 15 Surprising Differences

British snacks and American snacks share the same basic concept but almost nothing else. The words are different, the flavours are different,…

14 min read Read article →

Most British crisps are thinner and lighter than American chips. The Lays-style thickness is not absent from the UK market, but the default crisp is thinner. This is most noticeable with Walkers, which have a delicacy that American chips rarely match.

Multipack bags are the standard purchase format. Rather than one large sharing bag, most British households buy a multipack of individual bags for lunchboxes, packed lunches, or after-school snacks. The individual bag size is smaller than you might expect, typically 25 to 32g.

The colour-coded packet confusion

One detail that catches British people out as well as Americans: Walkers put Cheese and Onion in a blue bag and Salt and Vinegar in a green bag. Every other UK crisp brand uses yellow or orange for Cheese and Onion and blue for Salt and Vinegar. Walkers reversed the convention and have never changed it. The result is that anyone who learned crisps from another brand instinctively reaches for the wrong Walkers packet. This has been a talking point in Britain for fifty years.

For a full breakdown of how Walkers and Lays compare as products, are Lays and Walkers the same crisp? covers the differences in detail.

If you want a sense of which British crisp brands were popular before Walkers dominated the market, the crisps from the 80s post gives a good picture of how different things looked before PepsiCo consolidated the market.

How to Buy British Crisps in the US

You do not need to fly to London.

Walkers, Monster Munch, Hula Hoops, and other British crisp brands are available on Amazon in the US as imported products. The sellers are UK import specialists shipping genuine UK products. Prices are higher than you would pay in a British supermarket, partly because of shipping and import costs, but the product is the real thing.

The best starting point is a Walkers variety multipack, which gives you several flavours in one purchase and lets you work out which direction you want to go. If you want to try the flavours mentioned above, Monster Munch Pickled Onion and Hula Hoops are the ones to order first.

Browse the full Walkers crisps range on Amazon and you will find multipacks covering the core flavours. The Prawn Cocktail is the one to start with if you want the most specifically British experience.