Leicester storey of Walker's Oxford Street factory in Leicester. In the early days the potatoes were sliced by hand and cooked in an ordinary fish and chip fryer. In 1971 the Walker's crisps business was sold to Standard Brands, an American firm, who sold on the company to Frito-Lay. Walker's crisps makes 10 million bags of crisps per day at two factories in Beaumont Leys, and is the UK's largest grocery brand. The Beaumont Leys manufacturing plant is world's largest crisp factory. Meanwhile, the sausage and pie business was bought out by Samworth Brothers in 1986. Production outgrew the Cobden Street
The Co-operative brand The Co-operative brand The Co-operative is a common branding used by a variety of co-operatives based in the United Kingdom. Many in the UK consider 'Co-op' to be a single national business, whereas the brand actually represents a number of different consumers' co-operatives spanning various sectors. The Co-operative Group is the largest consumer co-operative in the UK and the biggest user of the Co-operative brand in its 4,500 trading outlets. Many independent retail societies in the UK trade as "Co-op" and many, such as the Midcounties Co-operative and the Central England Co-operative, use the latest incarnation of the common brand.