Santitas Frito Lay Scam

Santitas chips always seemed like a pretty good deal to me -- a one pound bag for about $2.  The lettering on the bag even proclaimed the good deal:  "$2 only".  Not available in the DC area, which didn't make a whole lot of sense, but available in places in downstate Virginia like Roanoke and Abingdon.  I used to "import" them in fact (i.e. I'd buy an extra bag down there and bring it along).  But was just at the Roanoke Wal-Mart, saw the Santitas bag at "$2 only," reached for it, only to have it slip through my nerveless fingers as I became aware of its size.  12 oz now.  So it's shrunk by 4 oz, or 25%, and they are still calling it a good deal.

I'll admit it's possible that they went from 16 oz to 14 oz without my noticing it (or without my caring a lot about it) (but see blog comment quoted below)  But the decrease to 12 oz is very noticeable.

Just googled around and found a blog from a while ago commenting on what a good deal the chips were.  Turns out they are made by Frito Lay, and the blogger thinks they are as good as Tostitos, Frito Lay's other tortilla chip product (and of course, the only one available in the DC area).  Commenters in January and February 2011 noted that the bag size had shrunk to 12 oz.  But I'm positive I bought one pound bags -- or maybe it was just 14 oz -- after that.  So the bag shrinkage may well have been gradually implemented, region by region. 

The blog is http://www.frugalfunfortune.com/2010/03/03/santitas-tortilla-chips-loop-hole, and the original post is from March 2010, but it actually looks like she's holding a 12 oz bag (can't read the ounces, but the grams seem to be 360 or so, which is between 12 and 13 ounces).  So perhaps in her region they had shrunk as early as March 2010.
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One reply dated July 1, 2011 says:

 "I just bought my last bag….I thought something was different with the size and Googled it when I got home. Sure enough, the 16 ounce bag has shrunk to 12 ounces but the price remains at “ONLY $2.00″ That’s just not right…and this is the last bag for me."


So as usual, I'm not the first to notice something like this.  But it's good to have validation.

Quite possibly a method of predatory pricing.  I.e. Frito is facing generic competition since tortilla chips are cheap to produce.  So they produce a quality chip at a lower price to stave off that competition.  I'll keep on buying generics -- most of the supermarket chains seem to have a generic brand of tortilla chips that come out to about $2 a pound, although they come and go.

Note that one of the commenters on the aforementioned blog said that the quality of Santitas had been going down, as of April 2011:

"The santitas chip brand owned by fritos has been converted to a poor version of one of the other tostitos. They used to be great and now they suck… I’m so very disappointed. I used to buy them all the time. The triangles are greasy and too thick and heavy. They also taste like lard. Complain and tell the company that they made a huge mistake."  

Of course, it's not necessarily a mistake at all.  I've often suspected that brands produce lower quality generic lines for the sole purpose of driving consumers back to the brands.  If Frito Lay actually reduced the quality of Santitas on purpose, that would be perfectly consistent with this theory.  It hadn't occurred to me that the brand might intentionally cause its "generic" version to fluctuate in quality, but you have to admit, that would be pretty brilliant.  Consumers will go back to the tried and true.

On the tortilla chip theme, that's my one regret about leaving Sam's Club for BJ's Wholesale Club.  Sam's used to have (as of a year ago, or whenever my membership lapsed), boxes containing 2 two-pound bags of decent tortilla chips for $5.99.  I.e. that's $1.50 per pound.  But BJ's doesn't have anything comparable, and their chips (they have a strong Frito Lay promotion going -- you can buy two 1 pound bags for $6, and can mix and match) are all in the $3 or more per pound price range.

Now I'm not advocating a lawsuit against Frito Lay or anything.  But I do think that this kind of behavior should be reported, and consumers should be aware of it.  Maybe this is a job for the FTC's consumer protection branch.

Update 21 March 2021:  For some reason, this seems to be the post on this blog that currently gets the most hits.  If you're concerned about this kind of thing in general -- corporate deception -- please take a look at my more recent posts, starting with Alt-QAnon: A Conspiracy Theory For the Rest of Us and The High Priests of Alt-QAnon: Jeremy Lent and Steve Coulter.

PS As a quick update, I'll note that Wal-Mart's "Great Value" brand chips aren't bad (and typically less than $2 for 13 ounces, which is pretty good nowadays), and Aldi's "Clancy's" brand is similarly cheap and not bad.