🠈 Pepsi-Cola 🠊
Pepsi Cola
PepsiCo is a brand offering a variety of sweetened drinks and snack foods. Pepsi also assembled a collection of fast food chains which they spun off as Yum Brands.
The company had 263,000 employees and earned $63.5 billion in revenue in 2017. They trade on the NASDAQ with the symbol: PEP.
Corporate History
It appears that the called as "PepsiCo" began as Loft, Inc.. I used the term "appears" because the merger of Loft and Pepsi involved a certain amount of corporate intrigue and a law suit. Anyway, I will start my history of PepsiCo with Loft instead of the invention of the cola formula as is done on most sites.
- 1860: William Loft (1828-1919), an immigrant from England, opened a candy store in Lower Manhattan.
- By 1920, Loft was a leading cany brand. They also owned the chain Happiness Candy Stores.
- 1906: William's son, George Loft, became a Congressman for New York as a Democrat and again in 1913.
- George Loft created George W. Loft Markets Inc. and the George W. Loft Realty Company.
- 1927: George Loft was a cofounder of the Emerald National Bank & Trust Co..
- 1929: George Loft founded the South Shore Trust Co. in Rockville Centre, New York.
- 1929: Loft Candy Company acquired Mavis Candies and made its president, Charles Guth (1877-1948), its vice president.
- 1930: Guth became the president of Loft.
- 1931: Guth was trying to re-nogotiate a deal with Coca-Cola and began buying Pepsi products but Pepsi went bankrupt.
- 1931: In a private deal, Guth purchased the Pepsi trademark and Pepsi formula for $10,500 and began selling Pepsi to Loft.
- 1935: Shareholds of Loft sued its president Guth for conflict of interest.
- 1939: The Delaware court ruled that Guth violated his fediuciary duty to Loft. Guth lost his position at Loft and eventually left Pepsi as well.
- 1941: Loft acquired Pepsi.
Formation of Pepsi
- In the 1880s, Caleb Bradham opened a pharmacy in New Bern, NC called Bradham Drug Company where he experiment with different soda drinks.
- 1898: Bradham rebranded a formula called Brad's Drink as Pepsi-cola. The name implied that it aided digestion.
- 1923: Pepsi had franchises in 24 states; however, fluctuations in the price of sugar forced it into bankruptcy.
- 1923: Craven Holding Incorporated acquired Pepsi for $35,000.
- 1928: Roy C. Megargel reorganized the firm as the National Pepsi-Cola Company.
- 1931: Pepsi went bankrupt a second time.
- 1931: Guth, the president of Loft, purchased the trademark and formula for Pepsi. Guth reformulated Pepsi to his liking.
- 1935-1939: The shareholders of Loft sue Guth and won the suit.
- 1941: Loft spun off its candy store division and changed its name to Pepsi-Cola Company.
- 1941: City Stores company owned by Albert M. Greenfield acquired Loft Candies
- 1971: The assets of Loft were eventually acquired by Southland Corporation which became Seven Eleven.
- 1964: Pepsi introduced Diet Pepsi.
- 1964: Pepsi acquired Mountain Dew from from Tip Corporation.
- 1965: Pepsi merged with Frito-Lay and changed its name to PepsiCo, Inc..
History of Frito-Lay
- 1945: The Frito Company granted H.W. Lay & Company the right to manufacture and distribute Frito potato chips beginning a era of joint expansion.
- 1961: The companies formally merged to create Frito-Lay
History of the Frito Company
- 1932: Charles Elmer Doolin (1903–1959) borrowed $100 from his mother to buy a corn chip recipe and hand-held ricer and began selling bags of Frito Corn chips in San Antonio, Tx.
- 1939: Frito acquired Fluffs pork skins and incorporated in Dallas, Tx.
- 1941: Frito opened its western division in Los Angeles and then expanded through franchise via the Frito National Company.
- 1954: Frito went public with 40 products and had manufacturing in 18 cities with 3,000 employees.
History of H.W. Lay and Company
- 1931: Herman Lay (1909–1982), of North Carolina, began selling potato chips in the South out of his car.
- 1932: Lay established his potato chip business in Nashville and began selling Gardner's Potato Chips for Barrett Food Products Company.
- 1938: Lay borrowed $30,000 and bought a half stake in Barrett's plants in Atlanta and Memphis to create the H.W. Lay Lingo & Company.
- 1939: Lay tood the name H.W. Lay & Company.
- 1944: Lay rebranded his chips as Lay's Lay Lingo Company.
- 1967: Frito-Lay introduced Doritos tortilla chips to the national U.S. market.
- 1969: Frito-Lay introduced Funyuns.
- 1970: Frito-Lay retired the Frito Bandito advertisements which some found offensive.
- 1971: Frito-Lay introduced Munchos.
- 1977: PepsiCo acquired Taco Bell.
- 1978: PepsiCo acquired Pizza Hut..
- 1980: Frito_Lay acquired Gramdma's Cookies.
- 1981: Frito-Lay introduced Tostitos tortilla chips.
- 1986: PepsiCo acquired Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).
- 1989: Frito-Lay acquired Smartfood which was established in 1985. They make popcorn.
- 1997: PepsiCo spun off Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC into a comp[any called Tricon Global Restaurants.
- 1991: Frito-Lay launched Sun Chip.
- 1991-1992: Pepsi bought the KFC stores from Collins Foods Limited which was building the Sizzler brand.
- 1992: PepsiCo acquired 67% of California Pizza Kitchen which they expanded aggressively.
- 1997: Bruckmann, Rosser and Furman Selz acquired CPK.
- 1997: Frito-Lay acquired Cracker Jack from KKR.
Cracker Jack History
Cracker Jack is a brand of candied popcorn with peanuts. German immigrants Charles Frederick Gunther, William Rueckheim and others sold a variety of candied popcorn in the 1800s.
- 1873, Fritz Rueckheim created F.W. Rueckheim & Bro.
- 1896: Louis Rueckham found a method to make a less sticky product and created the Cracker Jack brand.
- 1916: the company introduced Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo.
- 1964: Borden acquired Cracker Jack
- 1995: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts acquired Borden then sold off its brands.
- 1998: PepsiCo acquired Tropicana Products for $3.3 billion.
- 1999: PepsiCo spun off Pepsi Bottling Group while retaining a 35 percent stake.
- 2000: PepsiCo acquired the Quaker Oats Company for $13.4 billion.
- 2009: PepsiCo acquired the Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas, Inc. for $7 billion.
- 2011: PepsiCo acquired Russian based Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods.
- 2018: PepsiCo acquireed Bare Foods and a quarter of allMotti.
- 2018: Pepsi acquired Israeli-based SodaStream. (Ad: you can buy Soda Stream Products at Amazon.com)
References:
- Wikipedia - PepsiCo (Drawn 2/11/2019)
- Funding Universe - PepsiCo (Drawn 2/11/2019)