US food and beverage giant PepsiCo has hinted at plans to build a “global grain business” behind its Quaker brand as the company looks to strengthen its presence in healthier snacks.
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John Compton, CEO of PepsiCo Americas Foods, told analysts in the US that the Doritos-to-Lay’s maker wants to branch out more into other snacks categories outside its core chips and crisps business.
“The snacking market is a lot bigger than just the snack chips segment. Whole grains, nuts and seeds, fruits and vegetables [and] legumes are all areas in which we can make healthy foods snackable and convenient,” Compton said at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) conference in Florida yesterday (19 February).
PepsiCo’s Quaker brand, famed for hot cereals, can be used to “build a global grain business, leveraging the power of a super-grain like oats”, Compton said.
“Quaker oatmeal is the number one hot cereal brand in the world and we’re largely just getting started outside the US. Quaker bars are the number three bar player in the world and this is a fragmented market that’s primed for consolidation,” Compton explained.
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By GlobalData“Over time, we intend to build a global grain business leveraging Quaker. We can expand Quaker into cereals – both hot and cold – into bars and into Quaker healthy snacks for kids.”
In a sign that PepsiCo has already started rolling out Quaker-branded snack lines, Compton said the group’s Gamesa business had recently started selling a range of oat-based cookies in Colombia and Chile after its debut in Mexico.
As part of a wider plan to beef up it presence in healthy snacks, PepsiCo will also target the “boomers” consumer group with its nuts and seeds lines, Compton said. Consumers aged 45-65 “love to snack” but they want “healthy snacks, smaller pack sizes [and] they are going to go to different channels to find these types of products”, he added. “Nuts and seeds provide a new demographic group to target.”
In a presentation that focused heavily on PepsiCo’s food business, Compton also revealed that PepsiCo is to launch a snack aimed at women next month as the company looks to tap into demand among female consumers for “healthy” snacks.
