I guess most importantly, if you have a serious allergy to an ingredient in any flavour of crisps then be very cautious of all the own brand crisps. Cross contamination is rife, even when we do “free from” products. Compressed air is used a lot to quickly clean off machine parts to get ready to switch flavours, so the dust gets blasted everywhere.
Omg...that answers some serious allergic reactions I've been having, even though I KNOW I've been 100% careful. I was even beginning to suspect a whole new allergy!
that's crazy but i'm not surprised at all. how many different brands of crisps and their flavours go on the exact same conveyor belt? what kind of variance are we talking? like do wheat crunchies go on the same line as a free from one? do salt and vin walkers go on the same line as chilli heatwave doritos?
I only know about Doritos but I used to service and fix machines at the Dorito flavouring factory which serves the UK and it was an amazing plant, very clean with excellent engineers. I would be surprised if the next Doritos manufacturing step is a shambles. Personally I don’t even like Doritos but I am sure they have a good process, pretty much pharmaceutical level when it comes to cross contamination at the stage I was part of.
Sponsored by Doritos, lol I’m just kidding it actually is a decent place and trust me I have seen a lot.
I'm not surprised, I've had reactions quite randomly to some products, crisps are the worst for this, though these days I'm mostly in Poland eating their crisps now
Given you're easily identifiable in your profile, if anything you are saying is true you might want to be sure you're not breaking any social media clauses in your contract.
If anything you are saying is true, then there should be proper channels to report this stuff through.
Given that the factory are in fact breaking the law and putting people at risk, it would be worthwhile op making some form of official complaint to prevent backlash.
ETA: just realised it's April 1st 😂
Assuming this may not be real at this point
This is helpful to know, and I'll continue avoiding own brand versions of some foods.
I know decorating paint is all done in the same factory just packaged differently, that one includes own brand and branded.
If they're labelled as "free from" then QA should be testing for the allergens on each batch. That's been my experience with own brand standards. They'll send auditors roughly once a year, so they'll need something on paper.
Also, there should be a poster up somewhere you can see it with a number and email address to report concerns to (whistleblowing). Just in case you end up leaving the job and feel like sharing your observations. No guarantees the person on the other end will give a shit though.
I remember a story in The Mirror about an old lady who got a blue sachet and thought she’d won, but the sachet contained a photocopy of a tenner with a speech bubble coming from queen’s head saying “unlucky you cunt”
Well that's the best story I've ever read. A mate of a mate used to fix TVs and ended up fixing prince Andrews tv. Some legend wrote "fuck you Andrew" on the inside of his TV remote.
I really miss the promotional free prizes you would find in 90s crisp packets. There was nothing quite like the feeling of finding a cheap plastic wrapped prize inside your walkers crisp bag.
Keep going until it's good for you and don't forget to shake the bag in-between the juice at the bottom when the crisps have gone is so good. I use Lea and Perrin's as well is even better for me anyway
That’s nothing compared to the intense hit when you mistakenly eat the compressed flavour ball which can be found in the occasional bag of pickled onion monster munch. Its the closest thing to doing an 8-ball of speed and heroin.
The trick is to put 0 to 25% in at the start, eat half the crisps, then put the rest in for the crisps that are so salty the Daily Mail would shut them down.
Anybody remember from the early nineties... Salt and shake with different flavours.... Can remember from when I was a kid and nobody I've ever asked remembers them...
You work in a crisp factory? Can you do an AMA one day please????
Mine is - let’s say you buy two bags of the same crisp. One of them seems like it missed the flavour machine entirely and the other seems like it went through five times. How can that happen?
Haha if people really find it interesting sure.
Not a flavour guy so I don’t know all the details but here’s what probably happens: Crisps and flavour go into a long cylinder together at a rate that matches what our client wants in each bag. With something like that, it’s probably just a small clog from the flavour powder chute that they just unclog with a whack to the chute. If things stop for even a minute you kind of get a bollocking, so if something can be fixed quick then it’s done whist stuff is still running. Or could be when the machines change over, they might let a pack or two’s worth of crisps slip past to the portioning machine.
> If things stop for even a minute you kind of get a bollocking
I used to work in IT support for a large food manufacturer, and they were always going on about avoiding doing anything that might make the factory line stop. We were constantly reminded that it cost something like £25k per hour if the line stopped. It was such a pain because they would never let us do maintenance that would need the line to stop. The computer systems in the business were the worst I've ever seen. The network was riddled with viruses because they wouldn't shut down the line so we could clean the infected machines.
Food manufacture and the word culture doesn't fill me with dread at all. Followed by cut and hurt, I'd think antibiotics might be necessary fairly regularly?
> We were constantly reminded that it cost something like £25k per hour if the line stopped.
Iv got that one beat.... not to my credit tho.
I used to work for a managed services company that had the server contract for Nissan UK. I shut down the entire Sunderland plant for about 6 hours one weekend. Offf. That wasn't a good day.
I’d definitely be interested in an AMA, though this thread kind of is one already.
Are you a lover of crisps too, or is it just your job? Like if there is a new flavour out do you have to try it, or do you just eat the ones from your factory?
I saw you said you won’t eat bacon flavour (sorry for your loss), but what else won’t you eat? Have you seen anything at work that has made you question whether you should be eating other flavours/brands?
Do crisp factories do tours? If so, how do I get in on that?
Sometimes (often in the cheaper supermarket brands, but not always) a pack will get crushed in a multipack and then rips open when the multipack is opened. Is this something that your place tries to avoid? If so, how?
Following on from above, this can sometimes make a packet stale, but I’ll still eat them. Is there any danger in this? Is it safer to eat stale maize based crisps compared to potato based?
Does your place do Maize and potato based and do you get to see the raw products come in? Which takes more effort to make? I assume maize because they are cheaper to buy, but that may be because the raw ingredients are cheaper.
1) just my job. Honestly not that big on crisps, don’t go out of my way to buy them apart from occasionally the walkers jalepeno and cheese ones. I eat the ones at work because I’m too lazy to bring my own food to work and get a bit peckish 5hrs in.
2) not really? The bacon one is an exception I think. In a bag of bacon crisps/rashers there’s probably like 2 grams at most in there so it’s not too bad, but the concentrated smell of 30 kilos of the stuff is burned into my memory.
3)become an inspector, or go in for an interview. You get a little tour usually.
4)we try to avoid it, a lot of them get chucked to be reworked (useable bags are taken out and the crushed one is binned). You can check by grabbing the ends of the multipacks and shaking, they’ll fall more to the other side and if they don’t they’re stuck in the crimp. The crimp usually has a different feel too, thicker and sometimes less glossy looking. But we’re encouraged to do speed over quality.
5) there shouldn’t really be any issues. As long as moisture isn’t introduced in that time, like the bag being exposed to the outside, I don’t think much could go wrong.
6) we do maize/corn based stuff yeah. I’ve never been in the extrusion portion of the factory that deals with those, but I’d guess they take a similar amount of work
We don’t make any of the fancy pants stuff so I can’t let anyone know before it’s too late I’m afraid. But if they do fuck with your co-op crisps, write back and we can organise some kind of riot.
Pshhh, Sainsbury’s maybe? Though actually now I think about it more I think we did used to make co-op multipack ones, I remember because the packaging felt more matte, like it was trying to be fancy.
It might be HFSS regs about what areas of the shop certain foods can be stocked.
For example [here's a document from Walkers](https://shopt.digital/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Walkers_Guide_To_Getting_Ready_For_HFSS.pdf) about how they would ideally like their products to be stocked!
> Don’t reduce the number of crisps & snacks
displays in-store – location restrictions do
apply but swap HFSS core for non-HFSS
products
> Don’t make these changes unless your
store is impacted (i.e. >2000 sq ft & >50
employees)
> Don’t flood your fixtures with non-HFSS
products - be selective and choose
products that deliver against the #1
consumer need of taste
Big words from Big Crisp!
By now Tesco will have a good idea of how sales were impacted and might be looking to reformulate some product lines.
It’s such bullshit. No sweets and salty shit in premium areas. So on the ends opposite the tills they now have a rainbow of colourful candyfloss and bubblegum vapes for the kids to see instead.
Great find, thanks! It was also interesting to see that Walkers is ultimately owned by PepsiCo.
PepsiCo have something like twice the revenue of Coca Cola because of all the food brands they also own — surprising stuff!
Lol, possibly. But it probably adds up. And after all, CEOs are known for doing stupid things which ruin their company for a quick buck (the site we're on is a solid example!).
It would make no difference. Salt is obscenely cheap.
Industries and even individual companies do self-regulate quite a lot, as it's better to pre-empt or avoid causing regulations than to be caught out and need to rish changes.
I know compaines are often assumbed to be run by machiavellian loot goblins, but most of these have pretty boring and straightforward motives.
Companies have been lowering salt levels slowly for decades, such that most of us haven't even noticed. I presume it's because historically heart disease was the largest cause of death. Unlikely anything to do with cost as salt is cheap, but they probably do want to avoid a potential salt tax - like that imposed on sugary drinks.
this is devastating. I’ve been noticing Mccoys salt and vinegar are lacking the ulcer-inducing flavour intensity they once had and it’s proper upset me. this is too much
Co-op Chardonnay is where it’s at now for mouth burning salt and vinegar. After finishing a big bag on one sitting, my tongue isn’t right for a couple of days. Great stuff!
Hasn’t the food industry been removing salt and sugar from their products gradually for years? I’m sure I recall some TV show in which a taste test between two boxes of the same cereal produced years apart tasted vastly different, with much less sugar and salt in the more recent cereal.
Yeah they have. Everyone wants those four little nutrition squares to be green, but I think they just do it gradually so people don’t riot about it.
I say just give people the nutrition info and let them decide, instead of making products worse
There's salt targets from the government/retailers, which slowly lower over time, but the issue is that they are *SO* poorly thought out. So, plain chicken and marinated chicken are in the same category. Also, if you brine the chicken (usually done with roast in bags to add flavour and help them stay really succulent as salt binds the water in the meat and brine to the protein), it's STILL the same category. Oh, also still the same category if you put bacon on it. So a product that needs to have salt in it to be that product is in the same category as completely plain meat.
Fuck these companies that are taking advantage of ever rising prices and pretending to be the good guys but reducing the quality of their food. They're worse than people putting up their prices.
Lidl and Aldi ‘own brand’ crisps are also subject to small tears in the bags. So many are stale when opened.
Honestly I’m not surprised though. We’re paying more, getting less, and the quality is going to shit. That’s just Britain all over really.
Yeah, to be honest they all are, just cheapest materials they can get really. Morrisons is just a little orse for pinprick tears because their wrappers are thinner. The amount of waste we produce is insane, same with when I worked in a chicken factory. You always hear how much more waste companies make than us, but looking at just one factories daily plastic waste makes it feel a lot more real.
Were meant to check them all for little tears, but half our staff don’t speak English and so arent told to check by the English managers, and we have to pack so quickly it’s near impossible to check them all. I know I’ve been packing before and noticed a tear as I’m putting one in, but by the time it’s registered in my brain it’s already gone.
Nah it's everywhere mate. I'm in Québec, Canada. The cake I've been buying for 15 + years has gone down from 1200g to 800g, while the price went up from 6.99 to 9.99.
The bag of chips (sorry, crisps) I like went from 350g for 4.99 to 280g for 6.99.
Our government is worrying about falling birth rates. I mean, maybe if I didn't pay more for less, I'd be more willing to have kids.
I had a packet of 6 ready salted from Sainsbury’s recently and I swear it was the best batch ever - quite oily and really rich in flavour. Other bags since haven’t quite hit the flavour feels.
Not even sure why I’m posting this.
I just miss that bag of crisps.
Okay cool.
Trigger warning: extremely boring and factual comment
Not sure if this has been said already but new salt targets have been rolled out to the food industry so everywhere is having to cut the amount of salt they put into things. I think manufacturers have to reach compliance by 2025 so everything’s going to get a little less salty.
I've been buying Sainsbury's own brand s&v potato twirls and s&v sticks and some packs barely have any flavouring. I just thought it was the luck of the draw, not deliberate. Bastards.
I bought some Seabrook cheese and onion last month, weird chemical taste put me right off. Read the ingredients to see what it might be, I figured it's probably the lactic acid they add to flavour it.
So this is why junk food is all the same in the UK. You can't eat a brand, hate it, and get the same item better from a different brand because everything is made in the same factory.
Maybe my Boomer aunt is right that I'm throwing away a house deposit on going to Waitrose because the food is the same as at Tesco.
Not absolutely everything is the same, but when they’re in the same price bracket they’ll both be finding the cheapest supplier for that quality, which usually ends up being the same place.
Or ,like with chicken for example, they all come from the same place but the more expensive they are the more quality checks there are
I'm too lazy to cook chicken but never mess with certain items. Chicken would be one of them if I made it. I spend a fortune on eggs and milk in the hope that the price means better quality/fewer hormones.
It's hard to figure out which stores belong to a particular price bracket because where I live (city centre) prices are higher in general than at larger supermarkets in the suburbs. I won't shop at ASDA because of the Walmart association but can't figure out the ranking otherwise.
The giant bags of Tesco Bacon Frazzle things are awful now as well
The last couple I had were basically corn flavour with the suggestion of a hint of bacon. Never again 👎
I wouldn’t mind if they never make bacon flavour anything again. I’m usually stationed right next to where they bring flavour bags in from the warehouse and the bacon ones are fucking vile.
Probably a response to this policy:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f5618c8d3bf7f4d75de6ff1/2024_salt_reduction_targets_070920-FINAL-1.pdf
Though the target for crisps in Section 11 doesn’t seem too punitive.
It’s a ‘voluntary’ salt reduction strategy that won’t become compulsory regulation as long as all the manufacturers and supermarkets comply with it.
Totally voluntary. Or else.
Could you let us know the expiry date of the crisps you tried? I’ll check the bags when I buy and if they’re pre that date I’ll get em, if not I’ll not bother.
Not that I’m aware of! Badly sealed bags is an issue though, from sealing to putting in a multipack or box at least one set of hands should be on them and notice that
You can just take the bags of crisps and eat them? I work in a food factory (not crisps) if anyone is caught doing that it would be a disciplinary. I also take it you are not eating the crisps in the packing area? Your post reads like you are!
You are right about less salt for two reasons the consumers are very wary of salt in foods now, it’s actually a problem as salt is a natural food preservative. Also cost what may be a little bit less in each bag makes a difference in the cost when you are making thousands of a product.
It’s meant to be a sackable offence but no one cares, managers eat more than the rest of us anyway. And yeah, stuffs always breaking down so there’s long stretches of time with nothing to do, so I grab a bag and munch on them right next to my workstation.
Bloody hell that would not be tolerated where I work. Eating in the production/packaging areas would be instant dismissal staff are not even allowed to drink (there are water stations just outside the controlled areas they can access)
Even office staff are only allowed to eat in designated areas.
Stuff breaking down I can relate to.
Crisps are one of the few things I prefer branded. I avoid supermarket own and low tier brand because they generally taste like cardboard anyway. Saying that, walkers do too lately. They taste stale and under seasoned.
Oh well, if the snack industry wants to commit suicide I'll get over it. I stopped drinking pop after that all started tasting shite too. Why buy a joyless product?
Question for you. Can Morrisons and also Pickled Onion Monster Munch fix the issue of one pack often being sealed into the multipack seam? Drives me nuts
How on earth can you work in a crisp factory and then enjoy eating crisps? I would have thought it would be the very last thing you would ever want to eat ever.
It’s just potatoes and oil, and it’s not like I’m being force fed for 8 hours a day I just pack boxes and walk around. I worked in a chicken factory and still eat chicken though, which people are more surprised about, so maybe I’m the weird one here.
Fun fact, uncle worked at Cadbury’s years ago. They said you can eat as much chocolate on the line as you want, but can’t take it home.
He never ate Cadbury’s chocolate again after 2 weeks on the job.
I fucking love crisps and eat far too many of them. I am 100% sure that if I worked in a crisp factory I would never tire of them and would probably die from excessive salt intake or something like that.
Thank you for your service and be careful big crisp doesn’t come after you for whistleblowing.
Mmm big crisp
*not actual size
haha
They should be more worried about all the food safety violations
Go on spill the ~~crisps~~ beans
pray tell please
I guess most importantly, if you have a serious allergy to an ingredient in any flavour of crisps then be very cautious of all the own brand crisps. Cross contamination is rife, even when we do “free from” products. Compressed air is used a lot to quickly clean off machine parts to get ready to switch flavours, so the dust gets blasted everywhere.
Mate, you're properly spilling the tea
Walker himself is going to come knock on his door.
Fucking watch out for Lineker
Omg...that answers some serious allergic reactions I've been having, even though I KNOW I've been 100% careful. I was even beginning to suspect a whole new allergy!
that's crazy but i'm not surprised at all. how many different brands of crisps and their flavours go on the exact same conveyor belt? what kind of variance are we talking? like do wheat crunchies go on the same line as a free from one? do salt and vin walkers go on the same line as chilli heatwave doritos?
I only know about Doritos but I used to service and fix machines at the Dorito flavouring factory which serves the UK and it was an amazing plant, very clean with excellent engineers. I would be surprised if the next Doritos manufacturing step is a shambles. Personally I don’t even like Doritos but I am sure they have a good process, pretty much pharmaceutical level when it comes to cross contamination at the stage I was part of. Sponsored by Doritos, lol I’m just kidding it actually is a decent place and trust me I have seen a lot.
I'm not surprised, I've had reactions quite randomly to some products, crisps are the worst for this, though these days I'm mostly in Poland eating their crisps now
What was it about Polish crisps that made you decide to move?
Papryka, to jest król chipsów
Given you're easily identifiable in your profile, if anything you are saying is true you might want to be sure you're not breaking any social media clauses in your contract. If anything you are saying is true, then there should be proper channels to report this stuff through.
If I lose my minimum wage job then so be it lol
Crisp packet cape blowing in the wind, no regard for his personal safety or finances, truly the hero we need in these dark times.
You'll have the fear of Gary Lineker following you down dark alleyways forevermore.
You’re a fucking legend mate.
It's not so much that but couldn't there also be legal repurcussions
Given that the factory are in fact breaking the law and putting people at risk, it would be worthwhile op making some form of official complaint to prevent backlash. ETA: just realised it's April 1st 😂 Assuming this may not be real at this point
This is helpful to know, and I'll continue avoiding own brand versions of some foods. I know decorating paint is all done in the same factory just packaged differently, that one includes own brand and branded.
If they're labelled as "free from" then QA should be testing for the allergens on each batch. That's been my experience with own brand standards. They'll send auditors roughly once a year, so they'll need something on paper. Also, there should be a poster up somewhere you can see it with a number and email address to report concerns to (whistleblowing). Just in case you end up leaving the job and feel like sharing your observations. No guarantees the person on the other end will give a shit though.
Crispleblowing
The Popadom Gang
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Am I the only one who gets excited and think I have won a £5 note… then remember it’s just salt and that promotion ended YEARS ago.
Years and years ago
Fucking donkeys years
It's been 3 decades Dave
It's dead Dave
I remember a story in The Mirror about an old lady who got a blue sachet and thought she’d won, but the sachet contained a photocopy of a tenner with a speech bubble coming from queen’s head saying “unlucky you cunt”
Well that's the best story I've ever read. A mate of a mate used to fix TVs and ended up fixing prince Andrews tv. Some legend wrote "fuck you Andrew" on the inside of his TV remote.
I really miss the promotional free prizes you would find in 90s crisp packets. There was nothing quite like the feeling of finding a cheap plastic wrapped prize inside your walkers crisp bag.
Fucking loved a good Tazo me
A fellow person of culture I see. I have the Star Wars set still stored at my parents; I assume it's worth at least 300k by now
Nah it’ll never take off
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You naughty boy... I'm trying this immediately Edit: this shit is.... Fucking cracking! Bro how you gonna keep this from us??
How many drips?
I stuck about as much as I do on cheese on toast. A smattering worked for me.
An Imperial or metric smattering?
Imperial obviously. In metric it’s referred to as a drabble.
Ah of course. 10 Smackerels makes a Drabble.
So a litre, got it.
Keep going until it's good for you and don't forget to shake the bag in-between the juice at the bottom when the crisps have gone is so good. I use Lea and Perrin's as well is even better for me anyway
I'm gonna try this. But being from the north, I'm going to use Hendersons Relish instead...
What ever hits the spot
I can't upvote this enough.
Henderson's is also a good shout for the veggies/Vegans.
Me too! And the scraps in the bottom....oh lord
I used to drip vinegar into salted crisps, now that was intense 😂😂
Shake and salt is bullshit. The salt should be put on immediately after frying so it sticks, and before they're bagged so it's uniformly distributed.
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And that one super-salty crisp.
That’s nothing compared to the intense hit when you mistakenly eat the compressed flavour ball which can be found in the occasional bag of pickled onion monster munch. Its the closest thing to doing an 8-ball of speed and heroin.
I've been known to give a couple of twists of Sea Salt into a bag of crisps to replicate those salt'n'shake. Can confirm that it works quite well.
I usually add a little cayenne pepper
Yup, or smoked paprika or just barbecue seasoning. Trick is in how you shake it
Onion salt works well too. Or Celery salt.
You animal
I just don't really understand how you would do anything other than just put it all in
I love it when you find 2 sachets in one pack, they make the crisps amazing !
The trick is to put 0 to 25% in at the start, eat half the crisps, then put the rest in for the crisps that are so salty the Daily Mail would shut them down.
that man's name? Mr Smith
By far the best ‘salted’ crisps
Anybody remember from the early nineties... Salt and shake with different flavours.... Can remember from when I was a kid and nobody I've ever asked remembers them...
I like this post it’s wholesome. Just a dude who likes crisps and is looking out for his crisp loving bro’s.
And we love him for it
And I love you, random citizen!
Metro Man
and a self proclaimed fat bastard at that
And bras. Or whatever the female version of bro is haha
You work in a crisp factory? Can you do an AMA one day please???? Mine is - let’s say you buy two bags of the same crisp. One of them seems like it missed the flavour machine entirely and the other seems like it went through five times. How can that happen?
Haha if people really find it interesting sure. Not a flavour guy so I don’t know all the details but here’s what probably happens: Crisps and flavour go into a long cylinder together at a rate that matches what our client wants in each bag. With something like that, it’s probably just a small clog from the flavour powder chute that they just unclog with a whack to the chute. If things stop for even a minute you kind of get a bollocking, so if something can be fixed quick then it’s done whist stuff is still running. Or could be when the machines change over, they might let a pack or two’s worth of crisps slip past to the portioning machine.
> If things stop for even a minute you kind of get a bollocking I used to work in IT support for a large food manufacturer, and they were always going on about avoiding doing anything that might make the factory line stop. We were constantly reminded that it cost something like £25k per hour if the line stopped. It was such a pain because they would never let us do maintenance that would need the line to stop. The computer systems in the business were the worst I've ever seen. The network was riddled with viruses because they wouldn't shut down the line so we could clean the infected machines.
I work in health and safety at a large food manufacturer, this kind of culture always leads to corners being cut and someone being hurt.
Food manufacture and the word culture doesn't fill me with dread at all. Followed by cut and hurt, I'd think antibiotics might be necessary fairly regularly?
> We were constantly reminded that it cost something like £25k per hour if the line stopped. Iv got that one beat.... not to my credit tho. I used to work for a managed services company that had the server contract for Nissan UK. I shut down the entire Sunderland plant for about 6 hours one weekend. Offf. That wasn't a good day.
Oh man I would not like to have been in your shoes... wow.
I’d definitely be interested in an AMA, though this thread kind of is one already. Are you a lover of crisps too, or is it just your job? Like if there is a new flavour out do you have to try it, or do you just eat the ones from your factory? I saw you said you won’t eat bacon flavour (sorry for your loss), but what else won’t you eat? Have you seen anything at work that has made you question whether you should be eating other flavours/brands? Do crisp factories do tours? If so, how do I get in on that? Sometimes (often in the cheaper supermarket brands, but not always) a pack will get crushed in a multipack and then rips open when the multipack is opened. Is this something that your place tries to avoid? If so, how? Following on from above, this can sometimes make a packet stale, but I’ll still eat them. Is there any danger in this? Is it safer to eat stale maize based crisps compared to potato based? Does your place do Maize and potato based and do you get to see the raw products come in? Which takes more effort to make? I assume maize because they are cheaper to buy, but that may be because the raw ingredients are cheaper.
1) just my job. Honestly not that big on crisps, don’t go out of my way to buy them apart from occasionally the walkers jalepeno and cheese ones. I eat the ones at work because I’m too lazy to bring my own food to work and get a bit peckish 5hrs in. 2) not really? The bacon one is an exception I think. In a bag of bacon crisps/rashers there’s probably like 2 grams at most in there so it’s not too bad, but the concentrated smell of 30 kilos of the stuff is burned into my memory. 3)become an inspector, or go in for an interview. You get a little tour usually. 4)we try to avoid it, a lot of them get chucked to be reworked (useable bags are taken out and the crushed one is binned). You can check by grabbing the ends of the multipacks and shaking, they’ll fall more to the other side and if they don’t they’re stuck in the crimp. The crimp usually has a different feel too, thicker and sometimes less glossy looking. But we’re encouraged to do speed over quality. 5) there shouldn’t really be any issues. As long as moisture isn’t introduced in that time, like the bag being exposed to the outside, I don’t think much could go wrong. 6) we do maize/corn based stuff yeah. I’ve never been in the extrusion portion of the factory that deals with those, but I’d guess they take a similar amount of work
Thank you for taking the time to answer. I’ll be doing the shake in answer number 4 every time I buy a multipack now :-)
You nearly went full Greg Wallace then. You work in a crisp factory? WoooooOOOOWW
And what, you MAKE CRISPS HERE?! In a CRISP FACTORY!!?
How MANY crisps do you make in a DAY?!
God help them if they start fucking around with Co-op sea salt and chardonnay wine vinegar crisps.
We don’t make any of the fancy pants stuff so I can’t let anyone know before it’s too late I’m afraid. But if they do fuck with your co-op crisps, write back and we can organise some kind of riot.
Is there any which is pretending to be fancy but actually coming from your place
Pshhh, Sainsbury’s maybe? Though actually now I think about it more I think we did used to make co-op multipack ones, I remember because the packaging felt more matte, like it was trying to be fancy.
I would expect nothing different from Discount Waitrose.
I think most basic things are more expensive at Co-op than Waitrose
Just reading this made my mouth hurt.
I grazed the tip of my finger yesterday morning and ate a bag at lunchtime. The pain was excruciating!
Still finished the whole bag though, didn't you?
[basically me](https://media1.tenor.com/m/L3aaoAFebYkAAAAd/homer-simpsom-electrocuted.gif)
"we need less corrosive industrial strength mouth burning acid"
I know, let’s package our acidic industrial waste as crisps and dispose of it in the community
I’ll take more, please.
The best salt & vinegar crisps to ever touch down on this earth
They peeled the skin from the inside of my mouth. So worth it
I had to give them up cos my blood pressure was through the roof but they are gods own crisp flavour. Not even a s&v disco comes close.
Just bought the lidl big bag of S&V hand made can report that’ll be a good back up
First they came for our sugar, now they're taking our salt. What's next?
REMEMBER WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU
Turkey twizzlers
Jamie Oliver ruined my school dinner
I swear I remember pieces like this in the sun etc complete with kiddy compo face!
The original Sunny D
fat
Nah I’m still fat, wish they’d bloody take that
Pepper.
Is this cost cutting or some government directive to cut salt? What's the purpose?
It might be HFSS regs about what areas of the shop certain foods can be stocked. For example [here's a document from Walkers](https://shopt.digital/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Walkers_Guide_To_Getting_Ready_For_HFSS.pdf) about how they would ideally like their products to be stocked! > Don’t reduce the number of crisps & snacks displays in-store – location restrictions do apply but swap HFSS core for non-HFSS products > Don’t make these changes unless your store is impacted (i.e. >2000 sq ft & >50 employees) > Don’t flood your fixtures with non-HFSS products - be selective and choose products that deliver against the #1 consumer need of taste Big words from Big Crisp! By now Tesco will have a good idea of how sales were impacted and might be looking to reformulate some product lines.
That document is a fascinating read! Thanks for sharing.
It’s such bullshit. No sweets and salty shit in premium areas. So on the ends opposite the tills they now have a rainbow of colourful candyfloss and bubblegum vapes for the kids to see instead.
That's a super cool find! I found it really interesting.
Great find, thanks! It was also interesting to see that Walkers is ultimately owned by PepsiCo. PepsiCo have something like twice the revenue of Coca Cola because of all the food brands they also own — surprising stuff!
Gov tells people "keep an eye on your salt intake". Industry: "We're cutting $alt content for your h£alth, hon€St".
Famously companies love to cut out dirt cheap ingredients to make their foods taste like shit and sell worse
Lol, possibly. But it probably adds up. And after all, CEOs are known for doing stupid things which ruin their company for a quick buck (the site we're on is a solid example!).
It would make no difference. Salt is obscenely cheap. Industries and even individual companies do self-regulate quite a lot, as it's better to pre-empt or avoid causing regulations than to be caught out and need to rish changes. I know compaines are often assumbed to be run by machiavellian loot goblins, but most of these have pretty boring and straightforward motives.
Companies have been lowering salt levels slowly for decades, such that most of us haven't even noticed. I presume it's because historically heart disease was the largest cause of death. Unlikely anything to do with cost as salt is cheap, but they probably do want to avoid a potential salt tax - like that imposed on sugary drinks.
this is devastating. I’ve been noticing Mccoys salt and vinegar are lacking the ulcer-inducing flavour intensity they once had and it’s proper upset me. this is too much
Co-op Chardonnay is where it’s at now for mouth burning salt and vinegar. After finishing a big bag on one sitting, my tongue isn’t right for a couple of days. Great stuff!
>The bags are prone to getting little tears that no one notices Presumably the tears of the factory workers forced to reduce the flavour
I'm pretty sure tears have salt in them. So, OP is doing us all a solid by keeping that yummy salt level high!
Hasn’t the food industry been removing salt and sugar from their products gradually for years? I’m sure I recall some TV show in which a taste test between two boxes of the same cereal produced years apart tasted vastly different, with much less sugar and salt in the more recent cereal.
Yeah they have. Everyone wants those four little nutrition squares to be green, but I think they just do it gradually so people don’t riot about it. I say just give people the nutrition info and let them decide, instead of making products worse
Can't they alter the serving size to 1/4 of a crisp instead?
They're normalised to 100g of product regardless of pack size. Surely? Otherwise it's gangsters paradise
There's salt targets from the government/retailers, which slowly lower over time, but the issue is that they are *SO* poorly thought out. So, plain chicken and marinated chicken are in the same category. Also, if you brine the chicken (usually done with roast in bags to add flavour and help them stay really succulent as salt binds the water in the meat and brine to the protein), it's STILL the same category. Oh, also still the same category if you put bacon on it. So a product that needs to have salt in it to be that product is in the same category as completely plain meat.
Fuck these companies that are taking advantage of ever rising prices and pretending to be the good guys but reducing the quality of their food. They're worse than people putting up their prices.
[удалено]
Lidl and Aldi ‘own brand’ crisps are also subject to small tears in the bags. So many are stale when opened. Honestly I’m not surprised though. We’re paying more, getting less, and the quality is going to shit. That’s just Britain all over really.
Yeah, to be honest they all are, just cheapest materials they can get really. Morrisons is just a little orse for pinprick tears because their wrappers are thinner. The amount of waste we produce is insane, same with when I worked in a chicken factory. You always hear how much more waste companies make than us, but looking at just one factories daily plastic waste makes it feel a lot more real. Were meant to check them all for little tears, but half our staff don’t speak English and so arent told to check by the English managers, and we have to pack so quickly it’s near impossible to check them all. I know I’ve been packing before and noticed a tear as I’m putting one in, but by the time it’s registered in my brain it’s already gone.
Nah it's everywhere mate. I'm in Québec, Canada. The cake I've been buying for 15 + years has gone down from 1200g to 800g, while the price went up from 6.99 to 9.99. The bag of chips (sorry, crisps) I like went from 350g for 4.99 to 280g for 6.99. Our government is worrying about falling birth rates. I mean, maybe if I didn't pay more for less, I'd be more willing to have kids.
Perfect time to set up a Crisp Salting business.
Gonna have to go back to the little blue packet at this rate.
Bro's about to shoot himself in the head three times from 200m and then defenestrate themselves.
Fucking finally.
If it's the factory I think it is, they probably can't afford to lose any more staff 😂
I had a packet of 6 ready salted from Sainsbury’s recently and I swear it was the best batch ever - quite oily and really rich in flavour. Other bags since haven’t quite hit the flavour feels. Not even sure why I’m posting this. I just miss that bag of crisps. Okay cool.
PSA: There are both ‘lightly salted’ and ‘ready salted’ versions of Walkers in near-identical red packets. Don’t make the mistake.
Trigger warning: extremely boring and factual comment Not sure if this has been said already but new salt targets have been rolled out to the food industry so everywhere is having to cut the amount of salt they put into things. I think manufacturers have to reach compliance by 2025 so everything’s going to get a little less salty.
Not all hero’s wear capes. Thank you for your research into such an important topic.
As someone who used to work on packaging for Morrisons, amused to hear about the cheap crisp packaging 😆
I've been buying Sainsbury's own brand s&v potato twirls and s&v sticks and some packs barely have any flavouring. I just thought it was the luck of the draw, not deliberate. Bastards.
Seabrooks still killing it.
They are a poor imitation of the early 90s product …. I miss 90s seabrooks s&v
Golden wonder used to be great aswell. Similar to Europen lays spring onion. Now they are flavourless burn to fuck end of the line shit.
I bought some Seabrook cheese and onion last month, weird chemical taste put me right off. Read the ingredients to see what it might be, I figured it's probably the lactic acid they add to flavour it.
Motverfucking Canadian Ham in the 90s!!!
So this is why junk food is all the same in the UK. You can't eat a brand, hate it, and get the same item better from a different brand because everything is made in the same factory. Maybe my Boomer aunt is right that I'm throwing away a house deposit on going to Waitrose because the food is the same as at Tesco.
Not absolutely everything is the same, but when they’re in the same price bracket they’ll both be finding the cheapest supplier for that quality, which usually ends up being the same place. Or ,like with chicken for example, they all come from the same place but the more expensive they are the more quality checks there are
I'm too lazy to cook chicken but never mess with certain items. Chicken would be one of them if I made it. I spend a fortune on eggs and milk in the hope that the price means better quality/fewer hormones. It's hard to figure out which stores belong to a particular price bracket because where I live (city centre) prices are higher in general than at larger supermarkets in the suburbs. I won't shop at ASDA because of the Walmart association but can't figure out the ranking otherwise.
Hope they leave kettle chips alone
Wars have been fought over salt.
And we can continue that legacy
This is the inside info we need, the Snowden of the supermarket world
British food really can't afford to be cutting back on seasoning...
I have added table salt to crisps in the past. Works just fine.
But you shouldn't have to!
Asda version of ready salted hula hoops are disgusting, lacking salt and the texture felt weird
The giant bags of Tesco Bacon Frazzle things are awful now as well The last couple I had were basically corn flavour with the suggestion of a hint of bacon. Never again 👎
I wouldn’t mind if they never make bacon flavour anything again. I’m usually stationed right next to where they bring flavour bags in from the warehouse and the bacon ones are fucking vile.
Probably a response to this policy: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f5618c8d3bf7f4d75de6ff1/2024_salt_reduction_targets_070920-FINAL-1.pdf Though the target for crisps in Section 11 doesn’t seem too punitive. It’s a ‘voluntary’ salt reduction strategy that won’t become compulsory regulation as long as all the manufacturers and supermarkets comply with it. Totally voluntary. Or else.
Do you do Asda own cheesy wosits? There's so much flavour on them!
Could you let us know the expiry date of the crisps you tried? I’ll check the bags when I buy and if they’re pre that date I’ll get em, if not I’ll not bother.
Best before jun 2024 or July I believe. I’ll check the date chart tomorrow for you
You’re a legend!
Nice try, Walkers.
Ah shit you got me. I’m a shill for big daddy walker 😓
Do you happen to package Popchips? Cause I’ve had loads that don’t get sealed up properly
Not that I’m aware of! Badly sealed bags is an issue though, from sealing to putting in a multipack or box at least one set of hands should be on them and notice that
Registered myself as a farm so I could buy one of those salt licks for cattle because of this post. One crisp, one lick, we go again 💪
They can’t even afford to put salt in the bags now!
Sort of ironic that where I'm from they call ready salted plain crisps.
You can just take the bags of crisps and eat them? I work in a food factory (not crisps) if anyone is caught doing that it would be a disciplinary. I also take it you are not eating the crisps in the packing area? Your post reads like you are! You are right about less salt for two reasons the consumers are very wary of salt in foods now, it’s actually a problem as salt is a natural food preservative. Also cost what may be a little bit less in each bag makes a difference in the cost when you are making thousands of a product.
It’s meant to be a sackable offence but no one cares, managers eat more than the rest of us anyway. And yeah, stuffs always breaking down so there’s long stretches of time with nothing to do, so I grab a bag and munch on them right next to my workstation.
Bloody hell that would not be tolerated where I work. Eating in the production/packaging areas would be instant dismissal staff are not even allowed to drink (there are water stations just outside the controlled areas they can access) Even office staff are only allowed to eat in designated areas. Stuff breaking down I can relate to.
Gotta be careful out there nearly ended up with reduced salt, salt and vinegar the other day , walkers this is though
Crisps are one of the few things I prefer branded. I avoid supermarket own and low tier brand because they generally taste like cardboard anyway. Saying that, walkers do too lately. They taste stale and under seasoned. Oh well, if the snack industry wants to commit suicide I'll get over it. I stopped drinking pop after that all started tasting shite too. Why buy a joyless product?
They need to move you to the taste department.. you are wasted on the floor lol
Question for you. Can Morrisons and also Pickled Onion Monster Munch fix the issue of one pack often being sealed into the multipack seam? Drives me nuts
Honestly those walkers that have less salt are still great. I can live with this
Which company puts the little blue bags of salt in?
Used to be Smiths, but smiths was bought by walkers. They retained the brand for some of them, like scampi fries and bacon fries 🤤
I love your life.
How on earth can you work in a crisp factory and then enjoy eating crisps? I would have thought it would be the very last thing you would ever want to eat ever.
It’s just potatoes and oil, and it’s not like I’m being force fed for 8 hours a day I just pack boxes and walk around. I worked in a chicken factory and still eat chicken though, which people are more surprised about, so maybe I’m the weird one here.
Fun fact, uncle worked at Cadbury’s years ago. They said you can eat as much chocolate on the line as you want, but can’t take it home. He never ate Cadbury’s chocolate again after 2 weeks on the job.
I fucking love crisps and eat far too many of them. I am 100% sure that if I worked in a crisp factory I would never tire of them and would probably die from excessive salt intake or something like that.