PepsiCo is blinking.
After years of price hikes, including double-digit increases in 2022 and 2023, followed by roughly 4% bumps in both 2024 and 2025, the company says it’s cutting prices by as much as 15% on some of its biggest snack brands, including Doritos, Cheetos, Lay’s, and Tostitos. The changes start rolling out across the U.S. this week.
PepsiCo isn’t framing it as a rollback. Internally, it’s being sold as a reset.
The trial that went national
Executives say the company tested steeper discounts in late 2025 and saw something it hadn’t seen in a while: people came back. Not once, but more often. That was enough to take the experiment nationwide, focusing on specific pack sizes rather than blanket price cuts.
Rachel Ferdinando, who runs PepsiCo Foods U.S., said consumers have been clear about where they stand. Groceries cost more. Everything costs more. Snacks are where people start trimming.
The data, unsurprisingly, backs that up. PepsiCo’s food volumes fell 2% last year. That’s obviously not a collapse, but it’s a signal. Across the industry, shoppers are buying fewer name brands, stretching trips, or defaulting to store labels that feel easier to justify.
And this is not something that’s happening in a vacuum. General Mills pulled off a similar move late last year, cutting prices on most of its North American lineup and seeing volumes tick back up. The playbook is starting to look shared: stop pushing prices and try to win back traffic.
There’s also pressure from within the investor base. In late 2025, activist hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, which had acquired a roughly $4 billion stake in PepsiCo, publicly urged the company to cut costs more aggressively, simplify its sprawling product lineup, and improve profitability in its snacks and beverages businesses.
In response, PepsiCo reached an agreement with Elliott in December 2025. As part of that deal, the company closed several Frito-Lay snack plants (including facilities in Florida, New York, and California) and committed to reducing its U.S. product lineup by nearly 20% by early 2026. Those cost savings and productivity gains are now being reinvested, at least in part, to help fund the lower suggested retail prices on Doritos, Lay’s, Cheetos, and other major snack brands.
The other bet: cleaner ingredients
Price isn’t the only lever PepsiCo is pulling, though. The company has been quietly reworking its core brands. Fewer artificial dyes. Different oils. Protein-heavy twists on familiar snacks. Even soda is getting a wellness gloss, with Pepsi rolling out a version that includes prebiotics.
But none of that matters much on the shelf if people walk past.
For now, the pitch is simple. Doritos and Cheetos will cost less. PepsiCo is betting that’s enough to get shoppers to stop hesitating and start grabbing bags again.
Sources: PepsiCo, Food Dive, Food Navigator