Toronto, February 26:

Canada’s largest snacks company has launched a new line of potato chips targeting the country’s massive South Asian community.

Frito Lay Canada, a subsidiary of Pepsi, created and tested 40 chip flavours including seaweed, cucumber and green tea before choosing spicy curry and wasabi for test marketing. Bags of potato chips with these flavours hit grocery store shelves in Toronto and Vancouver in February.

In the Greater Toronto Area alone, South Asians annually spends $12.6 billion on retail goods and services, according to a marketing firm in Toronto. The attempt was in an obvious effort

to win the snack food dollars of Canada’s South Asian communities and address a desire for stronger flavours.

Frito Lay needed to strike a balance between authentic Asian flavours and the taste comfort

levels of Canadians, according to Dale Hooper, vice-president of brand marketing.

“In Asia, they have a plethora of different snacking options — nuts, meats. Those kinds of things are much bigger from an Asian perspective. So the challenge for us was to find the

perfect intersection between the flavours and tastes they like and something Western, which is the potato chip,” Hooper was quoted by Globe and Mail as saying.