Over the past year or so, the all dressed potato chip flavour has been quietly facing what could be the biggest opportunity of its long and storied life.
It’s a bestselling flavour in Canada — arguably the most Canadian of any flavour, since it’s all the other Canadian favourites mixed together. Versions differ from brand to brand, but in theory, it is some combination of barbecue, sour cream and onion, salt and vinegar and ketchup.
For years, all dressed was a strictly Canadian phenomenon. Outside the country, almost nobody knew what it was. But after a series of foreign test runs, the flavour found itself on the cusp of international fame.
Last year, one of the world’s biggest potato chip brands started eyeing all dressed for expansion into the United States. If Americans liked the flavour, it could become a permanent fixture on shelves across the country.
That kind of stardom would come at a cost, though. To please consumers in the American market, the flavour needed to change.
All dressed, as a concept, traces to Quebec, where “all dressed,” or “toute garnie” basically means “everything on it.”
The idea seems to predate chips. In a search of newspaper archives, advertisements for all dressed pizza appear years before anything mentioning all dressed chips. (In Montreal, ordering an all dressed pizza gets you something that approximates a deluxe in Toronto — likely pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers, give or take.)
It’s not clear who first decided to extend the concept to chips. No one has tried to trademark the term ‘all dressed’ for potato chips in Canada, though manufacturers rarely attempt the daunting process of trademarking flavour descriptions.
One of the earliest print advertisements for all dressed chips in the archive came from the Quebec snack manufacturer Yum Yum Chips in 1986. It was part of a Moonlight Madness sale at Zellers, advertised in a Cornwall, Ont., newspaper near the Quebec-Ontario border, that offered an assortment of Yum Yum chip bags — all dressed, BBQ, natural, salt and vinegar and ketchup — at 99 cents each.
In an article titled “Why This Canadian Potato Chip Flavor Is So Good,” U.S. travel website the Thrillist noted that Yum Yum Chips appears to be the earliest originator of the flavour, though the full story remains a “mysterious miracle.”
On its website, Yum Yum claims to have invented a “secret ‘all dressed’ recipe” in 1978. According to Yum Yum, “the crazy idea of mixing all the flavours” came about in an executive’s office.
Major chip brands, like Ruffles and the Canadian snack giant Old Dutch, don’t appear to have rolled out an all dressed version until the 1990s. Ruffles said its all dressed chips came out in 1998. Old Dutch had them in 1996, according Janis Thiessen, a historian who specializes in Canadian snack food.
Potato chip manufacturers started dusting their products with different flavours sometime around the middle of the last century. Canadian flavours were more vinegar-based and sour, while the American ones tended to lean more toward dairy products, like cheese and sour cream, said Thiessen, a history professor at the University of Winnipeg, who wrote the book “Snacks: A Canadian Food History.”
Thiessen suggested the difference in preferences could be due to the differences in immigration across both countries in 1900s, as both countries’ respective potato chip flavour pantheons were taking shape. So it would be a milestone if a Canadian favourite broke into the U.S. mainstream.
“It’s a huge deal,” she said.
About 10 years ago, the global food and beverage manufacturer PepsiCo, which owns Lay’s, Ruffles, Miss Vickie’s and Doritos, started experimenting with all dressed chips in the U.S.
All dressed was a top-five flavour for PepsiCo in Canada. In the potato chip category, Lay’s Classic is number one for PepsiCo, followed by Lay’s Ketchup, then Lay’s Barbecue, Ruffles Regular and in fifth, Ruffles All Dressed, according to PepsiCo Foods Canada President Ryan Collis. In an interview this month, Collis described Ruffles All Dressed as a “Canadian icon.”
In the U.S., consumers in northern border states took notice. PepsiCo started facing demands from a growing contingent of American all dressed fans to bring the flavour to U.S. stores.
“All dressed was one of the top requested flavours from U.S. consumers,” Collis said at a PepsiCo snack factory in Cambridge, Ont.
PepsiCo’s operations in Canada are distinct from the U.S., with a different network of domestic factories and test kitchens, which last year produced 26 new snack flavours for the Canadian market.
To start production on All Dressed in the United States, the Canadian team couldn’t just send the Americans a recipe. It took an international team of experts, who conducted a series of tests and flavour modifications to make sure it would satisfy the idiosyncrasies of the American palate.
“There are differences with these consumers and how they eat snack foods,” said Justin French, who leads the flavour team with PepsiCo’s global research and development wing in Plano, Tex. Something minor, like the “lingering effect of salt” in one country’s chip, could be off-putting to the other.
“In the U.S., the words ‘all dressed’ didn’t have a lot of meaning,” French said over a video call from a boardroom in Texas.
PepsiCo tried to expand all dressed in 2015, using the Ruffles brand. A promotional PepsiCo video from the time shows a flock of Canada Geese transporting bags of the chips across the border. The expansion started as a trial run, what the company called a limited time offer, but Ruffles All Dressed gained enough traction to stay on offer in the U.S. until 2021.
PepsiCo also tried a kettle-cooked version, which was short lived. A rival, Humpty Dumpty, also sells an all dressed version in the U.S.
Last year, PepsiCo decided to give all dressed its biggest tryout to date, running it on the company’s flagship chip brand, Lay’s.
French’s flavour team needed to make a whole new formula. They’d already come up with an Americanized all dressed for Ruffles, but Lay’s was a different texture and thickness. The seasoning would land differently.
“You have to modify the flavour profile for each base,” French said. (A base, in the PepsiCo world of snacks, is a particular style of chip. A Miss Vickie’s chip is a base. A Dorito is a base.)
The development work lasted from February through March in 2024, involving sensory specialists, marketers and consumer insights staff. In an email, PepsiCo confirmed that it brought in the Canadian team, since they “have a “deep familiarity with the original flavour.”
The resulting flavour, French said, dialed down the tanginess of the original and added “more barbecue notes.”
“They’re different,” he said. “You would probably pick up on it.”
To address concerns around name-recognition in the U.S., Lay’s came up with a new tag line: “All the best Lay’s flavors in one bite!”
The U.S. packaging describes all dressed as a combination of salt and vinegar, barbecue and sour cream and onion. There’s no mention of ketchup. French said PepsiCo experimented with selling ketchup chips in the U.S., but it didn’t land.
The packaging also has a stamp in the corner announcing it is a Canadian favourite, which French said touches on a current snack trend in the U.S. for what he called “escapism” — chips that can somehow transport you to another place.
“I mean, snacking consumers want to have (new flavours) constantly. And it helps them to, you know, escape,” he said.
By the end of the trial run last year, PepsiCo was getting strong indications that consumers wanted more. Executives decided All Dressed was ready. In the beginning of 2025, as a historic trade war set off between Canada and the U.S., Lay’s launched All Dressed as a permanent member of its American flavour roster.
Lay’s was planning to boost the flavour with its own Super Bowl commercial during the American broadcast in February. But Adweek reported that Lay’s had opted to run another ad. Instead of promoting a Canadian flavour, the commercial celebrated American potato farmers. According to PepsiCo, the company tested both commercials, and got an overwhelming response for farmer ad.
As anti-American sentiment ramped up north of the border, the Canadian all dressed invasion of the U.S. pressed forward anyway, albeit with less fanfare.
PepsiCo wouldn’t reveal exact sales data, but early indications are good: as of this month, it is being produced in six factories across the U.S. and French says the company is “quite pleased.”
One night this week, Bill Woods was working the late shift at his store, Uncle T’s Food Mart, in Little Rock, Arkansas. He had a whole tray of all dressed for sale, in the snack-size bags, and a few of the larger bags too.
“Yeah, I tried them,” he said over the phone. But it had been a while, so he opened up one of the little bags and tried them again. They tasted like barbecue, for sure, but there was something different too.
“They’re pretty good,” he said, crunching. “They’re pretty good.”
—with files from Astrid Lange
