PepsiCo DTC Home Shipping May Change Food Shopping Forever
PepsiCo launched a pair of new online shopping websites for snacks this week, attempting to take hold of the quarantine marketplace that's changed the world in the first few months of 2020. The company's implied COVID-19 and global pandemic are primary reasons why they've seen earning rise 10% in this past month. Now, as it's clear that companies like Amazon and grocery delivery groups like InstaCart are taking advantage of the stay-at-home mentality – and PepsiCo wants a piece of that pie.
Two websites were launched by PepsiCo. One's called PantryShop, the other is Snacks.com. The PantryShop.com website delivers bundles. Per FastCo, PantryShop specializes in Pepsi's top-selling products all packaged up in pre-selected bundles.
NOTE: While the sites are run by PepsiCo, you cannot yet purchase cases of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, or any other soda pop for that matter. It would appear that shipping single cans (or even single cases) of Pepsi Max remains too cost-ineffective.
The Snacks website is operated by PepsiCo company Frito-Lay. They've got a similar concept in mind – the "snack pack." This system allows Frito-Lay to skip the grocery store and the gas station, instead packaging up the snacks in their own Frito-Lay boxes, shipping the lot for "free." Users need to spend a minimum of $15 in order to get anything from the site – and once the $15 minimum is achieved, the user gets their "snack pack" shipped to their home for free.
Conglomerate shipping packs like this should bolster PepsiCo's earnings even further. PepsiCo will likely be able to topple smaller snack companies as they find their primary source of sales and discovery gone – no more 3rd-party vendors, no more new snacks. Just PepsiCo companies, and the snacks they've made.
This system should also serve to add to the number of deliveries made, and the amount of cardboard used in deliveries throughout the United States (and eventually the world). It'll be interesting to see if Amazon will see this PepsiCo business as a threat to their own pantry deliveries – or if they'll see it as a welcome addition to the future marketplace, all online, for the foreseeable future.