Pepsi – An Introduction
Introduction
PepsiCo, Inc., major producer of carbonated soft drinks, other beverages, and snack foods. Its beverage division, Pepsi-Cola Company, bottles and markets several popular brands of soft drinks in the United States and throughout the world. PepsiCo also owns Frito-Lay Company, the leading snack-food maker in the United States. PepsiCo is based in Purchase, New York.
PepsiCo’s soft drink products include Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and Mountain Dew. Other beverages include Lipton Brisk and Lipton’s Brew iced teas, All Sport athletic drink, and Aquafina bottled water. Frito-Lay products include Lay’s and Ruffles Potato Chips, Fritos and Doritos Corn Chips, Chee-tos Cheese Snacks, Tostitos Tortilla Chips, Rold Gold Pretzels, and Grandma’s Cookies.
Early History
PepsiCo traces its origins to 1898 when Caleb Bradham, a pharmacist in New Bern, North Carolina, created a curative drink for dyspepsia called Pepsi-Cola. Pepsi-Cola, later referred to simply as Pepsi, was a mixture of carbonated water, cane-sugar syrup, and an extract from tropical kola nuts. To sell his product, Bradham formed the Pepsi-Cola Company in 1903. In addition to selling the drink at drugstore counters, Bradham bottled Pepsi for sale on store shelves. At this time, bottling was a new innovation in food packaging.
However, due to major increases in the price of sugar, Bradham began to lose money on Pepsi, and in 1923 he filed for bankruptcy. The Craven Holding Company of Craven County, North Carolina, purchased the company’s assets. In 1931 Charles G. Guth of the Loft Candy Company in New York City purchased Pepsi-Cola from the holding company. Guth had difficulty getting the business going again, but he increased sales by selling larger bottles at an unchanged price. By 1933 Pepsi-Cola was sold by 313 franchised U.S. dealers; bottled in the United States, Cuba, and