A deli couple, an American fryer and a shed by the estuary.

Burts began in Kingsbridge, a small town at the head of an estuary in the South Hams of Devon. Its founders were Richard Burt and his wife Linda, whom the local paper describes as artisan food fans who had come across hand-cooked potato chips on a trip to America in 1995. The founding year varies between sources. The Kingsbridge & Salcombe Gazette group, reporting the company’s 25th anniversary in May 2024, says Burts was founded in Kingsbridge in 1999, and an industry design-award entry also dates its launch to 1999. The business magazine Real Business gave 1997 in 2009, and the trade site Bakery and Snacks said in 2023 that the company was founded in 1995 as Burts Potato Chips.

The Burts did not keep the business long. In 2000, Real Business reported in 2009, Nick Hurst and Jonty White bought out Richard Burt for just under £1 million, when the company was turning over around £0.5 million. Hurst told the magazine that the new owners spent heavily on larger premises and a new line, and that Burts, which had sold only to independent shops, decided to go into the supermarkets. By 2009, he said, Burts was selling in 18 countries, every crisp was still hand-cooked in Devon, and the company sold more than 12 million packs a year.

The hand-cooked process set the scale of the early factory. John Josephs, a long-serving director, told the Gazette in 2024 that when he joined in 2005 the company worked from the Parcel Shed in Kingsbridge with two small batch fryers and two bagging lines, and was running out of space. In April 2006 it moved to a larger site at Roborough, on the northern edge of Plymouth, just across the South Hams border.

An apron, a navy blue and a design award.

Burts’ packs have been redesigned twice in ways the trade press recorded. In January 2013, The Drum reported, the brand was given a new look by the London agency Tea Creative: the pack was drawn to resemble an apron, with the wearer’s hands appearing at each side as though resting on the hips. A new strapline, “Burts, British Potato Chips Hand Cooked with Care,” came with it, and the redesign was rolled out through a website, social media and point-of-sale material.

The second redesign came in 2020. According to the case study that won a Silver at the Design Business Association’s Design Effectiveness Awards in 2024, Burts had built a small, loyal following in the South West, while most of the wider business’s revenue came from making snacks for other companies. In 2020 Burts Snacks reappraised its consumer brand and commissioned a redesign from the agency Biles Hendry. The entry says the brand’s Devon provenance was worked into every part of the new identity and packaging, from “no-nonsense typography” to a navy blue brand colour.

The same entry credits the design with commercial results. It says 80% of 500 people surveyed intended to buy Burts after seeing the new packs, that the redesign helped win a nationwide listing with Tesco, the brand’s first with one of the big four supermarkets, and that Burts’ value sales rose 48% in the year after the redesign. It adds that the brand doubled a charitable pledge from sales, giving £20,000 to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a partnership the company still promotes.

Packaging has since changed in material as well as look. Packaging Europe reported in August 2025 that Burts had moved its 40g and 150g packs of flavours including Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar, Mature Cheddar & Onion and Devon Roast Beef to film containing 55% post-consumer recycled plastic, marked by a green flash on the pack; the company says this is the highest share of any hand-cooked crisp brand in Britain. It also names regional suppliers such as the South Devon Chilli Farm.

Seven savoury snack brands, one question of who makes them.

The seven brands in this group are savoury snack and crisp brands, mostly British, with one global sister brand: Hula Hoops, Monster Munch, Quavers, Wotsits, McCoy’s, Burts and Lay’s. Snack brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from small makers that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket aisle.

A snack brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the shape or flavour it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its snacks are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its snacks are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Leicester popcorn plant, a French owner and a Welsh partner.

Burts grew into a wider snack maker in the 2010s. In October 2017 it added a high-speed frying line at Roborough, increasing capacity by a fifth, Bakery and Snacks reported. In January 2018 it bought the popcorn maker Savoury & Sweet, taking over its 71,000 sq ft factory in Leicester and its staff; the company then planned to rename that business Burts Snacks. Bakery and Snacks reported Burts’ turnover as £29.5 million for 2017, and later as £68 million for 2021.

Its longest-standing investor was Jitendrakumar Patel, chairman of Empire Food Brokers, who invested in 2006 and was chairman and majority shareholder by 2023. In February 2023 Burts agreed to be bought by Europe Snacks, a Paris-based maker of savoury snacks for other brands, backed by the private equity firm Apax Partners, for an undisclosed sum, Bakery and Snacks reported. Europe Snacks had entered Britain by buying the co-packer Kolak Snack Foods in 2016. The deal kept both Burts plants, in Plymouth and Leicester, running.

Where the crisps are made is plainly documented. The company told the Gazette in 2024 that all branded Burts crisps are made at Roborough, with the Leicester plant making snacks for retailers as well as Burts popcorn. Its current range runs to the original hand-cooked crisps, a ridge-cut line called Ridges, and hand-cooked popcorn.

The brand’s selling has since moved to a new partner. From 1 June 2026, Grocery Gazette and the Brecon & Radnor Express reported, Canny Snacks, a new standalone business backed by the Welsh soft-drinks maker Radnor Hills of Knighton, Powys, took over the sales, marketing and distribution rights for Burts. Burts remains owned by Europe Snacks, which stays its exclusive manufacturer, and production continues in Plymouth. Canny Snacks is led by its co-founder Tom Carne, with guidance from Radnor Hills’ founder William Watkins and the former Yeo Valley chief executive Adrian Carne.

For a design guide, Burts shows how a navy pack and plain type can turn a regional hand-cooked crisp into a national brand without losing the place it comes from. Compare McCoy’s, Britain’s best-known ridged crisp, and Lay’s, PepsiCo’s potato-chip brand. For this guide we use navy, sand and a sea teal with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Burts’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.