PepsiCo broadens reach of Doritos brand with jerky launch

Dive Brief:

• PepsiCo’s Doritos brand is moving into jerky with a new product launch as part of its partnership with Jack Link’s, the companies said in a statement. 
• The offering includes two flavors, Jack Link’s Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili and Flamin’ Hot flavored Original beef jerky and meat sticks. 
• The move into jerky for Doritos builds on PepsiCo’s aggressive push to bring its chip brands into other categories, including pretzels and crackers, to expand its snacking dominance and the market recognition for many of its iconic items.

Dive Insight:

PepsiCo owns an enviable portfolio of snacking brands that generated nearly $21 billion in sales in North America during the company’s 2021 fiscal year — accounting for a little over a quarter of the CPG’s $79 billion in global sales.

But the beverage and snacks maker has been bringing Doritos and Cheetos, among other brands, into different snacking categories in order to grow sales, build brand equity and get brands into the hands of more consumers throughout additional times of the day. The Jack Link’s jerky fits squarely into that strategy.

A shopper may be craving a high-protein meat snack on the go and be attracted to an offering that includes the immediately recognizable name of Doritos. It’s a sound strategy, especially with consumers snacking more and eating while on the run. The jerky also brings the Doritos name out of the chip aisle into a new store category, a move that increases top-of-mind awareness and likely spurs additional sales for the flagship offering. 

“We know our snack fans are loyal to the iconic flavors we’ve created across our Frito-Lay brands, so this is the perfect opportunity to bring bold flavors in a new form,” Leslie Vesper, vice president of marketing at Frito-Lay, said in a statement.

PepsiCo and Jack Link’s are no strangers to working together. The companies first struck a distribution deal in 2009.

Jerky is the latest product launch to tap into PepsiCo’s strategy of bring its existing brands into new food categories.

It also gives the CPG giant a bigger presence in the jerky category, which has seen its portability and high-protein content attract more snacking consumers. An estimated 129 million Americans consumed meat snacks and beef jerky in 2020, according to Statista data. This figure is projected to increase to 133 million next year.

Last year, PepsiCo brought Doritos into the dip category with Spicy Nacho and Cool Ranch Jalapeno. An executive told Food Dive earlier this year it also has plans to debut a cracker product with one of its major chip brands, the company’s first foray into the space, as early as the second half of this year. It has not announced what Frito-Lay brand it would use.

There also are plans in the works to debut Cheetos-flavored pretzels, tapping into the earlier success PepsiCo had when it launched Cheetos Popcorn nationally in early 2020.

“The question in our mind is how far do these brands stretch,” Parth Raval, chief growth officer for PepsiCo Foods North America, said in a January interview. “We have strong reason to believe that our brands play in multiple domains and we want to ensure that every time there’s a snacking occasion that the shopper is looking to Frito-Lay.”