JP St Mary’s enters potato chips market

JP Tropical Foods Limited, known for its range of tropical snacks JP St Mary’s Banana, plantain, cassava and breadfruit chips, has added potato chips to its line of Caribbean snacks, and Jamaicans are already showing their enthusiasm for the new entry.

The product, which hit the market in two varieties – with sea salt; and fire, made with the flavourful Scotch bonnet pepper – is already creating a buzz online.

On JP St Mary’s social media pages and their own channels, consumers have been sharing the fun they are having as they try to decide whether they are going hot or cool (with/sea salt) in the ‘Find Your Flava’ challenge. They are also competing to see who can eat the most of the spicy variety without having to drink anything in the ‘Fire Challenge’.

“We are delighted to satisfy the demand for potato chips with a Caribbean product,” says JP Tropical Group Marketing and Business Development Manager Tara Goulbourne. “Our snack consumers enjoy a variety so, by expanding our range of products to include potato chips, we keep them happy.”

“We’ve created a flavourful product that is a hit and it is exactly what the name says – Fire – which connotes that it is extremely spicy. While there has been an economic slowdown, we know that persons are snacking more and people want comfort foods; something different, and we believe we’ve created this for them,” she adds.

JP St Mary’s Potato Chips are gluten free, trans-fat free and cholesterol free. They come in a convenient 28g package and are widely available in supermarkets, wholesales and shops across the island.

Aiming for growth

Globally, the potato chips market reached US$30 billion in value in 2019, and is expected to exhibit stable growth during 2020-2025, according to market forecasters. Goulbourne says the new addition to the JP St Mary’s snack family fulfils the company’s mandate to introduce new products every year and allows it to grow its business even in spite of the challenges of COVID-19.

Says Goulbourne: “We’ve had to shift our plans considerably, but fortunately the results have been positive. More persons are now on digital than ever before, thus, we’ve concentrated quite a bit of our marketing efforts there. This has resulted in the Potato Chips Fire going viral, where we see so many people doing the ‘Fire Challenge’, including the MTM family, Wayne Marshall and Tami Chin.”