PepsiCo slashes prices on snacks in bid to boost sales

PepsiCo beat Wall Street’s earnings expectations for the final quarter of 2025, despite its falling beverage and snack sales in North America.

The food and drink giant has been under pressure from investors to boost those sales, at a time when many shoppers are becoming both more cost-conscious and more health-conscious.

PepsiCo might call to mind a bottle of cola, but many of the company’s products are actually salty snacks, said Errol Schweizer, publisher of The Checkout Grocery Update.

“They control more than 50% market share in packaged snacks in many major metro areas,” he said.

That’s largely thanks to owning Frito-Lay, which makes (among other snacks) Doritos, Cheetos, Fritos, and Tostitos. Despite the delightful rhymes, the snacks haven’t been selling all that well.

There are two big reasons for that, said Peter Galbo, an analyst with Bank of America. The first is affordability.

Pepsi raised its snack prices during the pandemic, when a lot of people were at home, apparently snacking. But now, with food inflation elevated, Galbo said consumers are less willing to spend on chips and pretzels.

The company announced it’s slashing prices by 15% on some of its snacks, effective this week.

“The timing is not coincidental to this being the largest snack holiday,” Galbo said.

A snack holiday, also known as the Super Bowl. Pepsi wants to make sure fans stock up on its products before the game.

Pepsi is also trying to boost sales by positioning its brands as healthy, said Errol Schweizer. Or at least, healthier.

“They're looking at selling a Doritos with enhanced protein, ‘cause everybody's obsessed with protein these days,” he said.

Schweizer said some of the changes are marketing, more than anything else.

“If you look at their packaging, they're advertising a product like Lay's as minimally processed, as healthier or all natural, without really doing much to actually change the product,” he said.

Plain old potato chips are basically just potatoes, oil, and salt.

And when it comes to PepsiCo’s flagship cola? Duane Stanford, publisher of Beverage Digest, said Pepsi has been lagging behind Coca-Cola in recent years.

To address its arch-rival, Pepsi will be airing an ad during the Super Bowl, featuring a taste test … done by a polar bear.

“And of course it's Coca-Cola's iconic polar bear and it chooses Pepsi,” Stanford said.

The drinks in the ad are the zero-sugar varieties — a sign, perhaps, of where Pepsi sees its consumers shifting.