Is PepsiCo cutting the prices of its snacks by 15 per cent? That means its profit margins were too high (like many manufacturers)

Published on 4 February, updated on 14 February 2026

It is doing so to make its products more affordable in the face of a 2 per cent drop in sales volumes in 2025.

The packaged consumer goods company has therefore decided to reduce the recommended retail prices for Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos and Tostitos, partly in response to consumer feedback…

Taking a broader view, Dirk Van de Put, Mondelez’s chief executive, told analysts that North American consumers are not optimistic about the economic outlook and are concerned about job security… “They are fed up with price rises,” he said…

Procter & Gamble [which in Italy manufactures, for example, Dash, Lenor, Gillette, Oral-B, Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Swiffer, Mastro Lindo, Viakal, Fairy and Pampers] reported a slowdown in US saleslast month…

The Starbucks coffee chain, on the other hand, recorded a healthy increase in sales at existing stores, attributed to internal efforts to revitalise its business… Source: Financial Times

The PepsiCo case confirms what was already known: many major brands have inflated prices and margins in recent years. Not least because a 15 per cent drop means they had plenty of ‘reserves to fall back on’.

In 2023, the US multinational was among the companies accused of raising prices by more than costs had risen.

The list – certainly incomplete – included Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, PepsiCo, Algida (Unilever) and L’Oréal for the packaged consumer goods sector – a case of ‘déjà vu’ that I had experienced at Esselunga with the introduction of the euro.

In 2023,PepsiCo was the world’s second-largest food producer, behind Nestlé and ahead of the Brazilian company JBS, a producer of meat, bresaola and prosciutto.

P.S.: for an overview of the situation in Italy, read here.