How Lay’s® grew from a small business into a global brand

Today, Lay’s potato chips are a snack staple around the world. But the brand's story began during the 1930s with a traveling salesman named Herman Lay, who crossed the American South selling potato chips out of the trunk of his car. Almost a century later, that small business has grown into one of the world's most recognizable food brands.

It was 1932 when the 23-year-old Lay launched his business in Nashville by selling snack foods made by the Barrett Potato Chip Company of Atlanta. By 1939, he acquired that manufacturer and formed H. W. Lay & Company.

The company continued to grow throughout the 1940s. In 1944, Lay simplified his company’s name to the one we all see today: Lay’s Potato Chips. That same year, Lay’s became one of the first snack food companies to advertise on television: The commercial featured an animated mascot dubbed “Oscar, the Happy Potato.”

Lay’s would become one of the largest food companies in the Southeast U.S., but it didn’t stop there. In 1961, it merged with the Frito Company — which, like Lay’s, was founded in 1932 and sold snacks that are still enjoyed today, including its namesake Fritos. The new company became known as Frito-Lay, Inc. Four years later, it would hit another milestone. In 1965, Frito-Lay, Inc. merged with Pepsi-Cola to form PepsiCo, giving the brand even more national reach (and leading to more iconic foods).

Nearly a century after Herman Lay sold potato chips from his car, four billion pounds of potatoes every year — sourced from about 100 different farms, many of which are family-owned — head to factories that make chips nearly seven days a week. Once there, it can take as little as 20 minutes for a potato to come off a truck, be sliced, cooked, seasoned, sealed, and packed for people to enjoy. And every shift, about four associates serve as taste-testers, performing quality control checks on the chips that are being cooked.

And while Lay’s has stayed true to its tasty roots, it’s also evolved with the times and consumer tastes over its history. In 2025, the brand went through its largest redesign to date, putting its most important ingredient front and center: the potatoes that go into each bag. The team also made the logo’s sun beams warmer and more distinct, celebrating the “Lay’s Rays” that help those potatoes grow.

From those one-man beginnings to its global reach, the Lay's story reflects nearly 100 years of innovation, growth, and consumer appeal that brings those familiar bags to stores and into people’s lives around the world.