PepsiCo pivoting to meat snacks

ANAHEIM, CALIF. — PepsiCo, Inc. is joining the crowded meat snacks category with the launch of Good Warrior meat sticks, a new brand for a company that is the umbrella for many iconic snack food brands.  

PepsiCo plans a nationwide rollout of Good Warrior meat snacks beginning March 16 with two flavors, original and jalapeño pepper. Single-serve sizes will launch first in grocery stores and convenience formats followed by multi-packs from April to May in warehouse and club stores. Good Warrior meat snacks contain 10 grams of protein and 100 calories per single-serve stick.

Good Warrior marks a pivot from PepsiCo’s collaborative approach to innovation in the meat snack space. During the Natural Products Expo West trade show, held March 3-6 in Anaheim, Jason Crawford, senior director of meat snacks at PepsiCo, discussed how the new brand evolved.

“We had a long-standing partnership with Jack Links as a co-branded relationship,” he said. “We’ve had a line of jerky and meat sticks in a partnership with them for the last three to five years that has featured some of our most historic brands on the salty snacks business — things like Doritos and Flaming Hot.

“It’s been a successful partnership and launch, but the category has changed in terms of what’s driving meat snacks, in particular. It’s less about flavor and more about quality and more premium ingredients.”

It’s also about the consumer-as-North Star philosophy driving innovation across the consumer packaged goods landscape. In her keynote address during Expo West, Rachel Ferdinando, chief executive officer at PepsiCo Foods US, shared her insights on how consumers will shape the future of CPG innovation, moves PepsiCo is making now to transform its business and meet the challenge, and where a meat snack fits into the picture.

Facing a storm

In 2025, PepsiCo Foods US faced a storm of accelerating consumer expectations, shifting trust dynamics and real-time change of the definition of value, Ferdinando said.

“Despite the strength of our brands … our momentum was no longer keeping pace with the consumer,” she said. “At that moment, I believed we had a leadership choice to make: We could protect what had worked in the past, or we could transform for what consumers would expect next.”

PepsiCo took the path of transformation with an eye toward unlocking long-term growth and rebuilding momentum.

“I asked our organization a simple question,” Ferdinando said. “If consumer expectations are rising, what must fundamentally change?”

The question led to a focus on four structural shifts in the organization’s strategy, how it operates and how it innovates centered around ingredients, transparency, portfolio evolution and value. Starting with ingredients as an example, Ferdinando said consumers are paying closer attention to ingredients. Five years ago, artificial colors and flavors didn’t run among the top concerns, according to Ferdinando. But today, artificial ingredients are among the most discussed topics in food.

The meat snacks category is crowded with many established competitors.

| Photo: ©JAMMER GENE – STOCK.ADOBE.COM

A new brand of meat snack presented PepsiCo with the opportunity to formulate the product in-house with the transformation of the company top of mind.

“There was an opportunity for us as a company to go pivot to where the consumer is going, which is cleaner beef sticks, 100% grass-fed beef, obviously very much on trend,” Crawford said. “That’s the spot that we are now pivoting to with Good Warrior as another branch of our meat snacks business.”

And by following consumers’ lead, PepsiCo established Good Warrior for “really busy humans” and for the consumers who are leading growth in the category: millennial women with families.

“We’re obviously excited about a new brand inside of PepsiCo,” Crawford said. “I think it speaks to the audience that we’re trying to attract. Think of the everyday warrior; the consumers that are leaning in on protein are looking for convenient protein snacks. Good Warrior is designed to celebrate those moments of everyday heroics even though they’re simple. So you’ll see things around juggling for life balance, juggling the home front and how do you provide protein for meal replacement-type snacks.”

Flavors and formats

Beef flavored-meat snacks are driving growth in the category with at least three other flavors advancing in popularity, Crawford said. Original beef and jalapeño are the top-performing stock-keeping units on the market, so those were the flavors that set the foundation for Good Warrior. But PepsiCo will continue to innovate while monitoring the progress of Good Warrior’s initial launch.

“There’s work underway for other flavors and other things that are on-trend within the category,” Crawford said. “So I think we’re going to try to bring some other flavors … that we think we can deliver while still maintaining zero sugar.”

Importance of meat snacks

The meat snacks category is an important one for PepsiCo to win, according to Crawford, given the role of protein and functional snacking in consumers’ everyday lives and the transformation of PepsiCo.

“I think, for us, we want to become a sizable player, and having significant presence inside of that category… much larger than what we’ve been playing at today with some of our current meat snacks,” he said.

A challenge facing the company is the field is crowded with established competitors.

“It is definitely a category that is gaining interest, and there is a lot of competition,” Crawford said. “We think with Good Warrior, in particular, we’ve got a superior product from a taste standpoint, and so some of the early consumer testing we’ve done would support that. So we’re excited to get it into market.

“And we do think, from a value standpoint, that we’re going to create the right value proposition relative to where some of those other players are at today when we launch.”