Fans are no longer just tasting flavors. They are helping create them.

Ask a room full of people to name PepsiCo's best chip flavor and you may get a debate as lively as game day. Barbecue loyalists will make their case. Sour cream and onion fans will stand firm. Someone will bring up spicy and someone else will argue for cheesy. Everyone has a favorite, and a story to go with it.

That’s the magic of flavor and food culture. It’s personal and endlessly debatable. For PepsiCo, it’s also one of the most powerful ways to invite consumers into the innovation process and connect brands to culture.

How Lay’s and Walkers turn consumer ideas into new chip flavors

Few platforms capture that idea like Lay’s Do Us a Flavor. The fan-favorite program asks consumers to dream up the next great potato chip flavor, turning favorite meals, hometown cravings and personal memories into ideas that could land on store shelves.

The program first began in the U.K. in 2008, and this year Walkers is bringing an interactive, social-first spirit to the contest. The brand invited fans to pitch flavor ideas through a TikTok contest. Thousands of consumers shared concepts inspired by beloved foods, meals and flavor combinations, resulting in 130 million TikTok views in just three weeks. A bespoke creator-led gameshow challenge narrowed entries down further. Then, a judging panel consisting of Walkers experts, PepsiCo’s culinary teams and a Michelin-trained chef reviewed submissions and selected the top six. PepsiCo then used the most promising concepts to develop final flavors that consumers could rally behind.

The final two flavors are delicious and personal. Salt & Pepper Chicken was inspired by one finalist’s favorite Chinese takeaway order, combining notes of garlic, spring onion, black pepper and aromatic spices. Grilled Cheese & Chilli Jam was inspired by another finalist’s favorite side dish, which she shares with her son: golden halloumi bites dipped in sticky chilli jam for a balance of savory and sweet with a little heat.

Later this year, after consumers have tasted the final two, the ultimate winning flavor with the most sales will be announced to join the permanent Walkers lineup.

In the U.S., Lay’s brought the program back after a seven-year hiatus, drawing more than 700,000 submissions from fans across the country. Finalists included Bacon Grilled Cheese, Valentina^® & Lime (through a partnership with Valentina) and Wavy Korean-Style Fried Chicken — flavors that sound less like a traditional product pipeline and more like the most delicious potluck imaginable.

The winning flavor, Bacon Grilled Cheese, was inspired by Paula George of Sapulpa, Oklahoma, and her late father’s recipe, receiving more than 26,000 votes after it hit shelves and consumers were able to taste-test. Paula’s story is a reminder that a chip flavor can be more than a taste. It can be a memory, a meal and a little moment of joy, all captured in one crunchy bite. The Bacon Grilled Cheese flavor became so beloved that it returned to shelves in 2026.

How PepsiCo chefs develop chip flavors inspired by consumers’ passions

Once consumer-inspired flavors are selected, PepsiCo chefs step in to make them a reality. And turning a flavor into a finished product is no small feat. PepsiCo chefs use their Culinary Gold Standard process, which meticulously perfects the dishes consumers proposed, serving as the flavor prototype. These meal prototypes are then transformed into the chip flavor, which evolves through multiple rounds of testing, refinement and consumer feedback. This process can take months, or even years, to ensure that each flavor is authentic to the consumer’s idea, grounded in culture and rigorously tested.

When flavor can be a culinary passport

As fans around the world watched the global soccer tournament, Lay’s used flavor to extend the excitement of the game through food. The brand introduced a lineup of limited-edition flavors inspired by global cuisines, bringing inspiration from iconic dishes and culinary traditions from North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa into the chip aisle.

For fans, that means reaching for flavors inspired by Brazilian garlic sauce, Argentine steak with chimichurri, English fish and chips, Egyptian beef or wavy French onion soup. The flavors became a new way for fans to participate in a major cultural moment and explore tastes inspired by countries from around the world from home.

When it came to developing a flavor like Lay’s Brazilian‑Style Garlic Sauce, the PepsiCo R&D team conducted immersion tours of a Brazilian market, restaurants and Churrascarias, or Brazilian steakhouses, to get a deeper understanding of the cuisine and flavors, particularly the country's iconic garlic sauce. PepsiCo Chef Mitchell Dingwall explains the next step is to create “a series of different versions of the garlic sauce, some with variations of ingredients and others with differing cooking methods. We select the ideal recipe as our Culinary Gold Standard and continue to reference as an anchoring point as we develop the chip. This protects the integrity of the recipe until it is in consumers’ hands.”

How PepsiCo uses local tastes to inspire global flavor innovation

PepsiCo listens to what people love, then finds a way to make it new. Sometimes that means bringing back an old favorite, like in Thailand, where Lay’s celebrated its 30th anniversary by inviting fans to vote for the return of beloved flavors like Salted Egg.

It could also mean leveraging the ingredients and flavors that consumers like to cook with such as, Lay's Chinese Five Spice in South Africa and Walkers Heinz Tomato Ketchup and Lea & Perrins Worcester Sauce in the U.K.

Sometimes it involves reimagining a familiar favorite into something new, like in Türkiye, where Doritos x Cheetos Değiş Tokuş swapped the iconic flavors of both brands in response to consumer demand for distinctive food experiences. The brands invited curious consumers to experience puffy, airy Cheetos coated in savory Doritos Taco seasoning and crisp Doritos tortilla chips flavored with the bold Steak & Onion taste of Cheetos.

This remix style also made its way to the U.S. this year with Doritos Cool Ranch on Ruffles chips, Cheetos switching things up with Lay’s Sweet Southern Heat BBQ and Ruffles’ most popular flavor, Cheddar and Sour Cream, trading ridges for corners by dropping into a bag of Doritos. This trio of flavors came together after PepsiCo evaluated multiple brand and flavor combinations through head-to-head package testing to understand which products would resonate most with consumers.

And sometimes it means asking fans to take the wheel entirely, putting the power of dreaming up the next Lay’s or Walkers flavor directly in their hands.