The Limited Edition Coffee Doritos We Can't Believe Were Real

Doritos chips are a classic party snack, known for their crispy texture and cheesy, tangy taste. But, Doritos is a brand that doesn't like to just stick to the original flavors. They're constantly coming out with new flavor combos to mix things up for their consumers, such as the sweet & tangy BBQ they launched in 2023.

While some of these Doritos new releases might get your mouth watering, there's one flavor that you might not quite be able to wrap your head around – Doritos Coffee flavor. These Doritos debuted in July of 2024, although they were exclusively sold in Australia. The afternoon snack was rumored to have the usual Doritos flavor at first bite, but as you chewed, it started releasing coffee notes. It also had a slightly sweet finish, adding to the strange flavor combination of the snack. The coffee flavoring gives them a unique brown tinge making their appearance notably different from the classic orange-colored snack.

Although coffee and Doritos might sound like an odd pairing, the company actually had its reasons behind the launch. Three-quarters of Australians are coffee drinkers, and a fair chunk of those have more than one cup a day. The country also has quite a booming coffee culture, with plenty of craft cafés to be found all over the country serving up lattes, macchiatos, cappuccinos, and other types of coffee.

Unfortunately for many Australians, a good number of cafés close in the afternoon around three o'clock, which is right when most people's circadian rhythms are putting them in the midday slump. Doritos decided that they could come up with the solution by crafting a snack that has the caffeine kick of coffee to help get you through the day, while also marketing to the country's love of a good cup of Joe.

Beyond these reasonings, however, it's also an experimental product move that targets Generation Zers. The unconventional snack and its social media marketing campaign caught the eye of plenty of young people, which helped spread the word about Doritos and put the company's name back on the map.

If you were thinking of booking a plane ticket to Australia to buy these unique snacks, hold your horses. This was a limited-edition release and in fact, only 300 packets of the chips were distributed.

The company decided to release the chips as part of a PR move, which handed out a mere 25 packages of Doritos to different fans each day over the course of a little over a week. The packages weren't handed out helter-skelter, either — fans had to compete in a social media contest by commenting on a company post about what was making them grumpy. At the end of the stint, the company gave away the remaining 100 packages at a pop-up stand in Sydney.

Indeed, these chips were never actually released to be sold as retail items and instead joined the ranks of discontinued Doritos products. Still, considering how much the chips shook up the market, there's no telling whether or not they'll come back someday in the future.