By Steven Williams, EVP and Vice Chairman, PepsiCo
This year, as the U.S. marks its 250th anniversary, I’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings.
At PepsiCo, we’re focused on the future – how we grow, how we evolve, how we lead. But you can’t fully understand where you’re going without understanding where you started.
Our story didn’t begin as the global company we are today. It began in small, local moments.
Pepsi started with a pharmacist in New Bern, North Carolina, mixing a new drink behind his counter. Quaker began with oats milled in Ravenna, Ohio. Lay's started with a traveling salesman in Nashville selling chips out of his Ford Model A’s trunk. Gatorade was developed as a solution for a college football team in Gainesville, Florida, trying to perform in the heat.
None of these moments looked historic at the time. It was just people, grounded in their communities, trying to make something work.
And that's the part of our history I keep coming back to: the heart and hustle of where we began and how far those original sparks have carried.
What started in a handful of towns now reaches every state in the U.S. – and communities around the world – through the products we make, the jobs we support, and the communities we serve.
According to a report from Oxford Economics, the PepsiCo network contributed $64.9 billion in economic activity across the U.S. in 2024, the most recent year with full data available. Nearly $4 billion of that came from North Carolina, where Pepsi got its start, and another $3 billion came from Ohio, where Quaker began. Nationwide, for every person in the PepsiCo network employed directly, two more jobs are supported elsewhere in the economy.
That kind of growth comes with responsibility, which is why, this year, the PepsiCo Foundation is supporting 250 nonprofits across the U.S., with grants going toward food access, farming, safe water, and workforce development.
We've been part of this country’s story for more than 125 years. Not because we set out to make history, but because we kept investing in the places where our story began – and the places our story has grown ever since.
As America marks 250 years, I’m reminded that real progress, whether for a country or a company, starts the same way: locally, with grit, and with people willing to build something that lasts.
And that’s exactly what we’re still doing today.