PepsiCo has opened its first Lay’s-branded restaurant concept, Pilla Tortilla, in Madrid, Spain.

The move is aligned with the food and beverage major’s strategy to grow its ‘away-from-home’ channel and create new occasions for consumers to engage with the brand.

The new concept revolves around Spain’s classic tortilla (potato omelette), reinvented to include Lay’s potato chips as a defining ingredient. It was created in partnership with Michelin-starred chef Miguel Carretero.

In a statement, PepsiCo said Madrid serves as an “ideal setting” to debut the concept, which it described as combining “quality, innovation, and brand identity” in a “flexible, urban, and social format”.

PepsiCo food ventures senior vice-president and general manager Pol Codina said: “Pilla Tortilla is the first restaurant project by PepsiCo and Lay’s anywhere in the world.

“With this opening in Madrid, PepsiCo is expanding its food and culinary focus and delivering on our diversification and growth strategy in the away-from-home channel.”

The restaurant is part of PepsiCo’s new food ventures global business unit in Barcelona. It focuses on ready-to-eat formats that link the company's snack labels with consumers in different settings, from on-the-move consumption to foodservice locations.

Pilla Tortilla will start with two operating models. In Madrid, one format is a bar-restaurant setting providing eat-in service alongside delivery and takeaway. The other is a separate kitchen dedicated solely to takeaway orders.

For the menu, Carretero worked with PepsiCo’s brand team to adapt the tortilla recipe, so Lay’s chips are incorporated while retaining the dish’s traditional profile.

Tortilla is offered in several formats, including slices (pinchos), sandwiches and whole portions.

Customers can choose toppings such as spicy sausage with brie and honey, anchovies with Lay’s, crispy pork belly with alioli and salsa brava, and diced Iberian cured ham with gazpacho, among others.

Carretero said: “Lay’s is part of the collective imagination of many generations, and bringing its identity into such an emblematic recipe as tortilla was an exciting challenge. The result is a tortilla that’s instantly recognisable, but with a twist.”