Description
PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the food and beverage market. It oversees the manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of its products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company and Frito-Lay, Inc. PepsiCo has since expanded from its namesake product Pepsi Cola to an immensely diversified range of food and beverage brands. The largest and most recent acquisition was Pioneer Foods in 2020 for US$1.7 billion and prior to it was buying the Quaker Oats Company in 2001, which added the Gatorade brand to the Pepsi portfolio and Tropicana Products in 1998.
As of January 2021, the company possesses 23 brands that have over US$1 billion in sales annually. PepsiCo has operations all around the world and its products were distributed across more than 200 countries, resulting in annual net revenues of over US$70 billion. PepsiCo is the second-largest food and beverage business in the world based on net revenue, profit, and market capitalization, behind Nestlé. PepsiCo's flagship product, Pepsi Cola has been engaged in a rivalry for generations with Coca-Cola; it is commonly referred to as the cola wars. Although Coca-Cola outsells Pepsi Cola in the United States, PepsiCo within the North American market is the largest food and beverage company by net revenue. Ramon Laguarta has been the chief executive of PepsiCo since 2018. The company's beverage distribution and bottling is conducted by PepsiCo as well as by licensed bottlers in certain regions.
Pepsi has been repeatedly criticized by environmentalists for its relationship to negative environmental impacts of agriculture in its supply chain, and distributing operations such as palm oil-related deforestation and pesticide use, its use of water resources, and the negative impacts of its packaging—Pepsi's packaging has consistently been one of the top sources of plastic pollution globally. Similarly public health advocates have criticized Pepsi's high-calorie, poor nutrition product lines along with other popular snack and drink manufacturers. In response PepsiCo has made public comments on its commitment to minimizing their impact but has not released public information documenting progress on most of its public commitments.
