By Anuja Bharat Mistry and Aishwarya Venugopal
July 14 (Reuters) - Americans built one of the world's great snacking cultures. Now PepsiCo is discovering just how fast that can shift.
With one in five American households using GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, surging living costs, and a broader shift toward healthier eating, it is getting harder for the company to reignite growth. The pressure showed up in its quarterly results last week.
Sales in the Frito-Lay and Pepsi soda maker's North American food business
slipped 2%, while volume was flat in the second quarter ended June 13, even after earlier price cuts of up to 15% on some of its biggest products including Lay's, Doritos, Cheetos and Tostitos.
That marked a reversal from the modest recovery investors thought they were seeing at the start of the year, when volume growth improved to around 2% in the first quarter, with the North America food business returning to growth.
Volumes at its food business have fallen four times in the last six quarters.
The contrast with Coca-Cola is particularly sharp.
PepsiCo's North America beverage volume fell 4% in the latest quarter, while Coca-Cola reported a 4% growth in the region three months earlier, underscoring the challenges facing PepsiCo's snack-heavy portfolio as consumers become more selective about what they eat and drink.
Coca-Cola's stock has risen more than 20% so far this year, while PepsiCo is down around 4%.
PepsiCo's results are likely to bring more scrutiny from activist investor Elliott Investment Management, which disclosed a roughly $4 billion stake nearly 10 months ago and has pushed the company to reinvigorate its soda business, boost its share price and explore selling non-core food assets.
Investors "certainly want better volumes in the face of them lowering price," said Stephanie Link, chief investment officer at Hightower Advisors, which holds PepsiCo stock.
SNACKING BECOMES MORE INTENTIONAL
Americans are increasingly gravitating toward food with perceived health benefits such as higher protein, lower sugar and added fiber.
This comes as GLP-1 adoption has increased to 21% of U.S. households in May 2026, from 9% in January 2025, with users buying fewer sweet treats and cutting back on salty snacks, according to a PwC analysis of Numerator data.
"Consumers have moved from snacking on autopilot to making much more deliberate decisions about what they eat and how often," said Suzy Davidkhanian, vice president and principal analyst at eMarketer.
For PepsiCo, whose food brands including Ruffles and PopCorners generate about 58% of its annual revenue, the shift threatens one of the key engines that has driven growth for decades.
Analysts said any turnaround hinges not just on affordability, but on how quickly PepsiCo capitalizes on the demand for functional products.
The company's executives said last week that improvement in its North America business was likely to be more gradual than expected.
"PepsiCo now finds itself competing harder for every dollar, and increasingly that competition is about relevance as much as price," said Katherine Machado O'Hara, founder of marketing consultancy The Oxigeno Project.
The company "must rethink its 'giant in the room' mentality and support their innovation teams to allow products to market much faster ... A year late isn't just a delay, it can mean missing the trend entirely."
(Reporting by Anuja Bharat Mistry and Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Sriraj Kalluvila)
