When was PepsiCo, Inc. founded?

PepsiCo, Inc. was founded in 1965, in Purchase, New York by Donald M. Kendall, Herman W. Lay.

Who are the founders of PepsiCo, Inc.?

The founders of PepsiCo, Inc. are Donald M. Kendall, Herman W. Lay. The company was established in 1965 in Purchase, New York.

Who is the current CEO of PepsiCo, Inc.?

The current CEO of PepsiCo, Inc. is Ramon Laguarta, serving since 2018.

Where was PepsiCo, Inc. founded?

PepsiCo, Inc. was founded in Purchase, New York in 1965 by Donald M. Kendall, Herman W. Lay.

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PepsiCo, Inc.

Food and beveragesFounded 1965- Updated June 2026

Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya

Last reviewed: June 2026

Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.

CorpDigest

Search brand historiesSearchK Contact

PepsiCo, Inc.

Food and beveragesFounded 1965- Updated June 2026

Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya

Last reviewed: June 2026

Founders

Who Founded PepsiCo, Inc.?

Q: Who founded PepsiCo, Inc.?

PepsiCo, Inc. was founded by Donald M. Kendall, Herman W. Lay in 1965 in Purchase, New York.

Donald M. Kendall, Herman W. Lay · Founded 1965 · Purchase, New York

Last reviewed: June 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya

Quick Answer

PepsiCo, Inc. was founded by Donald M. Kendall, Herman W. Lay in 1965 in Purchase, New York. The company is currently led by Ramon Laguarta.

Founding Story

The board meeting that created PepsiCo lasted longer than anyone expected. It was 1965, and two men with very different backgrounds were trying to convince their respective shareholders that a cola company and a chip company belonged together.

Donald Kendall had spent his career inside Pepsi-Cola, rising from salesman to president through sheer competitive aggression. He'd once served Nikita Khrushchev a Pepsi at a Moscow trade fair — a publicity stunt that became Cold War folklore. Kendall understood marketing, international ambition, and the psychological warfare of competing against Coca-Cola. But he also understood Pepsi's structural limitation: in a two-horse cola race, the second horse needs more than advertising to win.

Herman Lay came from a completely different world. During the Great Depression, he'd built a snack business through route selling — literally driving a truck to stores, stocking shelves, collecting payment, and moving to the next stop. By the early 1960s, his company had merged with the Frito Company to form Frito-Lay, and he'd built something Kendall envied: a direct-store-delivery system that gave Frito-Lay physical control over retail shelf space in a way that beverage companies, dependent on independent bottlers, could never match.

The merger logic was elegant. Pepsi-Cola had brand recognition, marketing muscle, and cultural relevance with younger consumers. Frito-Lay had operational discipline, manufacturing scale, and a distribution network that touched every grocery store, convenience store, and gas station in America. Together, they could offer retailers something no competitor could: a combined basket of high-velocity snacks and beverages from a single supplier.

But the early years weren't smooth. The two companies had fundamentally different cultures. Pepsi-Cola was a marketing organization — flashy campaigns, celebrity endorsements, the Pepsi Generation. Frito-Lay was an operations organization — route efficiency, shelf freshness, manufacturing consistency. Integrating them required PepsiCo to let each side preserve its strengths while the corporate parent pursued scale.

Donald M. Kendall

Co-founder 1965

Background

Donald M. Kendall built his career inside Pepsi-Cola rather than arriving as an outside financier. He joined the company as a salesman and rose through international and executive roles, developing a reputation for aggressive marketing, global ambition, and direct competition with The Coca-Cola Company. Kendall understood that Pepsi needed more than advertising energy to challenge its larger rival. It needed scale, distribution power, and a broader platform of consumer occasions. His experience in sales shaped the practical logic of the 1965 merger with Frito-Lay: the combined company could bring retailers beverages and snacks rather than fighting shelf battles one product at a time. Kendall's pre-merger work also gave him confidence in international markets, where Pepsi often used partnerships, local bottling, and political relationships to expand against entrenched competitors.

Role at PepsiCo, Inc.

Donald M. Kendall was the Pepsi-Cola executive most closely associated with creating PepsiCo through the 1965 merger with Frito-Lay. His specific contribution was recognizing that the cola war could be strengthened by owning adjacent food occasions rather than simply spending more on soda advertising. After the merger, Kendall served as PepsiCo's chief executive and helped build the company into a more aggressive global competitor. He pushed international expansion, youth-oriented marketing, and broader diversification, including the later restaurant strategy that would eventually be unwound. Kendall's legacy is strategically mixed: he made PepsiCo more ambitious than a beverage company, but some later diversification moved too far from the packaged-goods core. His lasting influence is PepsiCo's willingness to compete through portfolio breadth, retail relationships, and cultural marketing rather than cola alone.

Herman W. Lay

Co-founder 1965

Background

Herman W. Lay built his career in snacks through route selling, distribution discipline, and retailer relationships. During the Great Depression, he developed H.W. Lay & Company by selling snack products through a route system that emphasized freshness, availability, and store-level service. That background mattered because snack-food economics depended on execution close to the shelf. A bag of chips had to be stocked, rotated, promoted, and replenished better than competitors' products. Lay's company merged with the Frito Company in 1961 to form Frito-Lay, combining Lay's potato-chip distribution with Frito's corn-chip manufacturing and brands. By the time of the 1965 Pepsi-Cola merger, Lay had already helped build a national snack platform. His expertise gave PepsiCo a physical retail advantage that could not be copied through advertising alone.

Role at PepsiCo, Inc.

Herman W. Lay was the snack entrepreneur whose distribution culture became central to PepsiCo's long-term advantage. He supported the 1965 merger because he saw that snacks and beverages shared retailers, consumer occasions, and promotional opportunities. After the merger, Lay served as chairman and helped preserve the strength of the Frito-Lay business inside the larger PepsiCo structure. His contribution was not merely brand ownership; it was the direct-store-delivery mindset that kept products visible and fresh in thousands of outlets. That operating approach still defines PepsiCo's snack advantage in North America. Lay's lasting influence is visible whenever Frito-Lay controls shelf presentation, launches a new flavor quickly, or uses route density to defend share. PepsiCo's most durable advantage owes as much to Lay's distribution instincts as to Pepsi's marketing history.

PepsiCo, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Ramon Laguarta

CEO

2018 – Present

Ramon Laguarta has led PepsiCo through inflation, pandemic disruption, supply-chain pressure, and a faster shift toward functional and health-adjacent products. His key decisions include advancing pep+, investing in digital and AI-enabled supply-chain productivity, acquiring Rockstar for energy, buying Siete Foods for modern food occasions, and acquiring Poppi for prebiotic soda exposure. He has also pushed zero-sugar beverages, packaging goals, and international execution while defending Frito-Lay's central role. The measurable outcome is an FY2025 revenue base of $93.9B, although the profit decline in FY2025 shows his next test is margin recovery.

Indra Nooyi

CEO

2006 – 2018

Indra Nooyi led PepsiCo through the Performance with Purpose era, pushing the company to address health, sustainability, and long-term portfolio relevance before those issues became unavoidable for packaged-food companies. She invested in better-for-you products, international growth, research and development, and environmental goals while defending the importance of keeping snacks and beverages together. Nooyi also completed the $3.2B SodaStream deal in 2018, extending PepsiCo into at-home beverage preparation and packaging reduction. Her measurable outcome was a broader strategic identity: PepsiCo was no longer only a marketer of indulgent brands, but a company publicly committed to changing ingredients, packaging, and growth markets.

Steven Reinemund

CEO

2001 – 2006

Steven Reinemund led PepsiCo after the Quaker Oats acquisition, an era defined by integrating Gatorade and sharpening the company's focus on high-return packaged foods and beverages. He emphasized operational efficiency, portfolio discipline, supply-chain performance, and the continued strength of Frito-Lay. Reinemund also supported shareholder returns and helped stabilize PepsiCo after earlier diversification into restaurants had been unwound. His measurable outcome was a company better positioned around snacks, sports hydration, and core beverage brands, creating the platform Indra Nooyi later used for health, sustainability, and emerging-market expansion.

Donald M. Kendall

CEO

1965 – 1986

Donald M. Kendall led the formation and early expansion of PepsiCo, making the 1965 merger with Frito-Lay the defining strategic decision of the company. He expanded Pepsi's international ambitions, strengthened marketing against Coca-Cola, and pushed PepsiCo beyond a narrow cola identity. His era also included diversification into restaurants, which later proved both strategically useful and operationally distracting. The measurable outcome was the creation of a global food-and-beverage company with a much broader revenue base than Pepsi-Cola could have built alone.

Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.

Founders

Who Founded PepsiCo, Inc.?

Donald M. Kendall, Herman W. Lay · Founded 1965 · Purchase, New York

Last reviewed: June 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya

Quick Answer

PepsiCo, Inc. was founded by Donald M. Kendall, Herman W. Lay in 1965 in Purchase, New York. The company is currently led by Ramon Laguarta.

Founding Story

Donald M. Kendall

Co-founder 1965

Background

Role at PepsiCo, Inc.

Herman W. Lay

Co-founder 1965

Background

Role at PepsiCo, Inc.

PepsiCo, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Ramon Laguarta

CEO

2018 – Present

Indra Nooyi

CEO

2006 – 2018

Steven Reinemund

CEO

2001 – 2006

Donald M. Kendall

CEO

1965 – 1986