PepsiCo made crunch the selling point of its lower-salt Doritos in Europe

Compared with the recipe it replaced, the new UK Doritos recipe introduced in October 2024 contained up to 18% less salt and 14% less total fat, according to BakeryAndSnacks.com. The thing PepsiCo actually told shoppers about was the crunch.

For anyone running product development at a food manufacturer, the useful part is the order of decisions. The same problem comes up whether the product is a biscuit, a chocolate bar, a yogurt or a soft drink: improve the nutrition without losing the reason people buy it. Doritos shows one sequence that worked. Choose the route, test it in one market, then scale.

Picking the recipe eaters would notice

Karen Scott, PepsiCo Europe's VP of marketing innovation, told BakeryAndSnacks.com that the company had more than one way to hit its sodium and saturated fat targets. It picked bold crunch, she said, because that option seemed to land best with consumers. According to Scott, the teams held several paths open on purpose and then chose the one most closely tied to the brand promise. Nutrition targets steered development, and the brand's reputation for bold flavour and crunch helped decide which version consumers ended up buying.

The stakes were high. PepsiCo counts Doritos among the biggest brands in PepsiCo Europe, and in the company's own account Scott was plain about the limit the team faced. The hard part, she said, was that nobody wanted Doritos to turn into a different product. She said the team needed a better nutritional profile and had to keep pace with changing regulation, and that effort is what produced a crunchier texture. Brand, innovation, R&D and local market teams all worked on the project together.

For the UK, the changes were more corn, a different cooking process and reworked seasonings. The thicker chip base already used for Dippers and Extra Flamin' Hot now carries the classic flavours Cool Original, Tangy Cheese and Chilli Heatwave. That means the texture being sold as the main benefit came from a format the brand already produced and sold, now extended to its best-known flavours. In other European markets, recipes were adjusted to fit local rules and tastes.

The timing is the lesson worth borrowing. Because the consumer benefit was picked while technical options were still live, R&D and marketing were working toward the same target before anyone locked a recipe. "Once teams saw its potential, we deliberately made that enhanced crunch central to the proposition," Scott told BakeryAndSnacks.com. In PepsiCo's own telling, the pitch didn't lead with nutrition at all. It stuck to Doritos' promise of boldness and sold the new Bolder Crunch as a brand asset.

Buyer data backs that choice. BakeryAndSnacks.com cites the International Food Information Council's 2026 Food & Health Survey, which found taste influences food and beverage purchases for 88% of Americans, ahead of price at 78% and healthfulness at 56%. Doritos took salt and fat out and gave shoppers a crunch they could hear, a sensible bet when 88% of Americans say taste shapes what they buy and only 56% say the same of healthfulness.

One caveat: the IFIC figures describe American shoppers, and the Doritos work happened in Europe. They point the same way as Scott's own view, which PepsiCo published, that local consumer acceptance ultimately decides whether a proposition works. A recipe change promoted mainly for its nutrition could end up selling the attribute fewest shoppers rank first.

A Dutch test of the shelf and the line

BakeryAndSnacks.com reports that a test in the Netherlands looked at repeat purchase and manufacturing consistency ahead of the broader European launch. These are separate questions. The first is whether shoppers come back and buy it again. The second is whether the factory can produce the same crunch in every bag at scale.

PepsiCo says its developers have to balance flavour, texture, stability and shelf life all at once. Tara Glasgow, PepsiCo's chief science officer and EVP of R&D, says progress comes from thousands of decisions shaped by science, consumer understanding and rigorous testing. According to the company, the work draws on research, design, food safety, nutrition science, culinary, regulatory review, brand insight and local market teams. It is backed by a staff of over 2,500 R&D associates working in 19 R&D centers.

That network includes nutrition scientists, seasoning specialists, chefs, regulatory experts and product developers. The seasoning role matters more than it sounds here: the UK's reworked seasonings had to carry three classic flavours onto a thicker base with more corn in it, and a flavour that tastes right in a development kitchen still has to taste the same coming off the line.

That scale is the strongest objection to treating Doritos as a template. PepsiCo says the work behind a product that looks familiar on the shelf can take months or years of adjusting ingredients, testing taste and checking quality, and a mid-sized manufacturer could struggle to develop several reformulation routes in parallel. The cheaper parts of the method don't depend on headcount, though: choosing the eating benefit early and testing both repeat purchase and line consistency in a single market before a regional launch.

What the European rollout delivered

Once the market test succeeded, the renovated product rolled out across Europe, including the UK. PepsiCo has since reported results covering the two years that followed.

Read those numbers with the qualifier BakeryAndSnacks.com attaches: the growth was supported by distribution, promotion and marketing. They measure the whole launch, then, not the recipe on its own. Still, the fear with any change to a familiar recipe is that loyal buyers walk away, and the reported outcome runs the other way, with growth and new consumers after the change.

The figures also suggest why the single-market test earned its place. A repeat-purchase read in the Netherlands gave PepsiCo a signal before it committed distribution and marketing across the region. For a manufacturer without PepsiCo's budget, that kind of contained test is the cheapest way to find out whether a reformulation will hold its buyers before the costly part of a rollout begins.

Why HFSS status matters for shelf placement

The salt and fat reductions in the new UK formulation moved the products into non-HFSS classification, according to BakeryAndSnacks.com. Leaving that classification, the outlet notes, can reopen prominent retail opportunities and support further brand investment. Scott's point about responding to a changing regulatory environment is how this connects back to the crunch.

This is where the reformulation pays off twice. Shoppers get a product with a noticeable improvement in how it eats. Retailers get a product that qualifies for more prominent placement than it did before. For a brand team, that second benefit changes the business case: a recipe change can be justified on where the product sits in the store as well as on its nutrition panel.

The condition is narrow and specific. The placement upside applies to UK lines currently classified HFSS that a reformulation can bring under the threshold. For those manufacturers, the Doritos case suggests the classification belongs in the reformulation brief from the first day of development, alongside taste and texture targets, rather than being checked once a recipe is finished.

PepsiCo's next targets: whole grain and fiber

European Doritos is one result of a longer programme. PepsiCo says the goals it has tracked since 2015 delivered drink options with lower or no sugar, recipes for 7UP, Mountain Dew and Mirinda, lower sodium in selected Doritos, Lay's and Walkers products, and, in some markets, oils lower in saturated fat for Lay's, Doritos and Cheetos. Almost every item on that list involves taking something out.

The next phase covers more ground. Besides its 2030 sodium goal, PepsiCo says it is paying closer and more deliberate attention to what people look for in the food they choose, and to how its products could carry more nutrients. That moves the work from cutting ingredients toward adding them.

Some examples are already on shelves: Tostitos carrying 8 grams of whole grain in each serving, Quaker Chia & Flaxseed Instant Oats, Quaker Fiber Instant Oatmeal and, in the US, Simply Doritos with whole grain. Putting ingredients in can threaten taste and texture as much as taking them out. That suggests the order Doritos followed, with the eating benefit first and the test market second, could matter just as much in this next phase.

The thing to watch is how PepsiCo sells those additions. If whole grain and fiber launches get an eating benefit up front the way Bolder Crunch did, that would suggest the European Doritos method is becoming the company's standard approach to reformulation.