Approach

We define our key stakeholder groups as those who impact — directly or indirectly —our business success, or who are impacted by our operations. The insights and support that we receive from key stakeholder groups and platforms is critical to how we develop, implement and evolve our business and sustainability agenda. We value the collaboration and close partnership with a broad range of organizations within our value chain and beyond to help us identify emerging risks and opportunities, prioritize and scale our efforts and create long-lasting value for our company and society. For example, when creating our pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) agenda, we engaged with more than 50 different stakeholders across several geographic areas.

We solicit feedback from and partner with stakeholders through a variety of mechanisms. The following list summarizes our key stakeholder groups, their significance to PepsiCo, how we engage with them and their topics of interest. It is not exhaustive, but it provides examples of our process. For additional information about our engagement with shareholders and other stakeholders, please see pages 39-40 of our 2024 Proxy Statement.

Investors

Importance to PepsiCo

We believe that regular, transparent communication with our shareholders and other investors is essential to PepsiCo’s long-term success. As providers of capital, investors support our ability to finance new projects and advance the future of our business.

How we engage

We engage with our shareholders and other stakeholders year-round in a variety of ways:

• Our investor relations team regularly meets with shareholders, prospective shareholders and investment analysts. As appropriate, these meetings include our Chairman of the Board and CEO and Chief Financial Officer.
• Every year, during the two-month period before the Annual Meeting of Shareholders, we generally contact our 75 largest shareholders, who in 2023 represented approximately 49% of our outstanding shares of Common Stock, offering to discuss a broad range of topics.
• Subsequent to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders, we continue our outreach efforts to develop a better understanding of the feedback received from shareholders and issues important to our shareholders.
• As reflected in our Corporate Governance Guidelines, our Presiding Director is available for consultation and direct communication, if requested by major shareholders. Our engagement program involves directors, senior executives and associates from many different parts of the company, including from communications, investor relations, executive compensation, compliance and ethics, legal, public policy and government affairs, and sustainability teams.

Key matters of interest

Investor engagement is generally focused on our portfolio strategy, financial and operating performance and capital allocation. Members of our management team regularly engage with shareholders and other investors to discuss our sustainability strategy and initiatives, human capital management, company culture, inclusion, corporate governance, executive compensation practices and to solicit feedback on these and a variety of other topics of interest.

NGOs

Importance to PepsiCo

NGOs help identify key issues, represent the views of affected stakeholders and provide guidance on how we should take action to address them, advocate for preferred policy outcomes and advance efforts. The NGOs we engage express opinions on a wide range of topics, and we consider their expertise and perspective as we craft our approach to key issues.

How we engage

PepsiCo maintains both direct and collective dialogue with leading local, national and multi-national non-profit groups. We do so both as part of an ongoing effort to build knowledge and maintain relationships as well as to meaningfully contribute to specific events or activities. Direct partnerships with NGOs include contributing funding to projects of mutual interest, asking for feedback and advice on certain topics to advance our pep+ agenda, as well as monitoring their reports and campaigns for insights that can help shape our strategies.

In addition, we regularly meet with diverse stakeholder groups, often in collaboration with leading non-profit groups that bring together investors, non-governmental organizations and businesses in support of sustainability and public health.

Key matters of interest

NGO interest ranges from topic- or geographically-specific issues, to more broad global and cross-cutting sustainability issues. These include such topics as climate change, water scarcity, packaging, nutrition, public health, inclusion, human rights and other environmental matters related to PepsiCo’s supply chain, sustainable agriculture, sustainability reporting and various other issues.

Consumers

Importance to PepsiCo

Consumer demand drives the sale of our products. We strive to create joyful moments and nourishment through our products and brand experiences. By aligning our product portfolio with consumer needs and preferences, we can strengthen our competitive positioning and continue to deliver our mission to Create More Smiles with Every Sip and Every Bite.

How we engage

We engage with our consumers through a number of channels that help us to understand their needs and interests, as well as share information about our product portfolio and company. These include market research, advertising and marketing, social media and company communications, including sustainability reporting and consumer-centric content on our website.

Key matters of interest

Since creating a sustainable future for the planet and society continues to be important for people and communities, we too have worked towards further integrating our business plans with our sustainability agenda to aim to satisfy and encourage these new demands. Product safety, Nutrition, Labeling, and Packaging continue to be key areas of interest. 

Industry and peers

Importance to PepsiCo

As a global company, we understand that our voice and scale can add to the momentum of certain initiatives, but that progress is often best achieved when multiple organizations join together. When we partner with our peers to build consensus on global and local topics, we can create momentum, scale and increased impact.

How we engage

We engage with our peers through forums, industry associations, multi-stakeholder platforms, charters, pledges, initiatives and more in order to participate in pre-competitive collaboration. PepsiCo supports a variety of charters and pledges that promote sustainability and allow us to support holistic solutions to systemic challenges that we cannot overcome alone. Examples of these collaborations include the Consumer Goods Forum and the World Economic Forum. Alongside industry representatives or NGOs, we participate in working groups, sit on advisory boards of industry associations or participate in events and activities to raise issues, discuss them from our respective vantage points and collaborate on developing solutions or deepening our collective understanding of an issue. Furthermore, we sometimes partner to advocate for desired policy outcomes. For further information, see Endorsement of multistakeholder principles and initiatives.

Key matters of interest

Leveraging the knowledge and the opportunity to scale initiatives faster through collaborations with our peers allows us to become Faster, Stronger and Better and provides the opportunity for us to encourage our peers to help drive change for global challenges like climate change and human rights, among others. Together, we are working to create large-scale changes in areas that we view as important.

Customers

Importance to PepsiCo

Our customers are the conduit through which we distribute and sell our products to consumers globally. Maintaining strong relationships with customers helps us to bring our products into the hands of consumers, delivering more smiles and strengthening our business.

How we engage

We engage with customers through a number of channels that range from regular commercial dialogue and initiatives to collaboration on shared sustainability ambitions. Engagement can be undertaken directly or through participation in broader partnerships with industry groups, NGOs or customer-led initiatives.

Key matters of interest

As consumer preferences and habits change, we are focused on pivoting our resources to provide first-class service levels, driving game-changing innovation and delivering mutual value creation unmatched in our industry.

Our customers are key players in the food system, with influence downstream to their consumers and upstream to their suppliers. Addressing global sustainability challenges requires collaboration along the value chain, making customers essential partners in our pep+ journey. Many of our customers have ambitious sustainability goals of their own and face local regulatory and reputational pressures to improve their social and environmental performance. By addressing key sustainability issues like climate change, water stewardship, nutrition, human rights and packaging, we can help our customers to meet their own objectives and collectively contribute to a more sustainable food system.

Suppliers

Importance to PepsiCo

Our suppliers are a critical link within our value chain, providing the ingredients, materials and services needed to make our products. With their partnership, we are striving to create a more sustainable food system.

How we engage

We expect our suppliers to adhere to the same standards of integrity to which we hold ourselves. We aim to respect the fundamental human rights of all workers and communities in our operations and supply chain. To help ensure we are positioned to prevent, identify and address potential impacts, we established a global human rights approach that is guided by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Suppliers of goods and services who do business with PepsiCo entities worldwide are expected to follow our Supplier Code of Conduct (SCoC) and all other relevant policies as a condition of doing business with us.

Where possible, our supply contracts include our SCoC, and we also provide training on the SCoC to suppliers included in our Global Human Rights Due Diligence Program. In purchasing categories with time-bound commitments to sustainable sourcing, such as palm oil, our procurement teams use tools such as supplier scorecards to evaluate and compare performance of individual suppliers against our expectations. In cases where we identify potentially high risk or priority supply chain concerns, we deploy specific programs to improve knowledge, awareness, and outcomes.

We also engage with suppliers through programs such as the Sustainable Farming Program, which champions and aims to advance positive social, environmental, and economic outcomes among the farmers from which we directly source crops. For more on engagement in our agricultural supply chain, see Agriculture. Furthermore, we provide an Agricultural Grievance Mechanism to help manage environmental and social concerns raised about our supply chain.

PepsiCo has identified our Top 200 Global GHG-emitting suppliers, and in 2023, launched the pep+ survey, Leader Ladder Framework and pep+ Dashboard. The Leader Ladder takes suppliers on the pep+ journey from: Initiating, Engaging, Progressing, Accelerating and Leader. This framework allows PepsiCo to engage suppliers where they are on the journey and to monitor and track progress against pep+ and provides further insights that lead to the development of capability-building programs.

PepsiCo strives to develop a robust supplier base that provides quality goods and services.

Our Speak Up hotline, which is available to employees and other stakeholders, is an important component of our culture, ethics and integrity, and we encourage our suppliers and business partners to use their own effective grievance mechanisms as well as make our Speak Up hotline available for their use.

Key matters of interest

Engagement with suppliers centers around a number of topics of mutual interest. Examples of these include human rights, working hours, fair contracts, ethical conduct, health and safety, inclusion, alignment with pep+ and environmental stewardship.  

Employees

Importance to PepsiCo

PepsiCo believes that human capital management, including attracting, developing and retaining a high-quality workforce, is critical to our long-term success. We strive to engage our employees and create meaningful opportunities to work, gain new skills and build successful careers while building an inclusive workplace.

How we engage

In addition to informal engagement with teammates and managers, we have established various mechanisms designed to encourage PepsiCo employees to Voice Opinions Fearlessly. Each of these channels is designed to provide the opportunity to speak up, sharing feedback with those empowered to address it. They include an annual Organizational Health Survey (OHS), our periodic Employee Confidence Index pulse check and Life Cycle Surveys, conducted at key moments in employees’ tenure with the company. In 2023, 80% of employees worldwide voiced their opinion through the OHS.

Our Speak Up hotline is available to all employees anywhere in the world by phone or online in languages spoken by our employees. Speak Up is widely promoted at facilities and office locations, on company internal and external websites and in various training programs. When contacting the Speak Up hotline, an employee may remain anonymous where permitted by law.

In 2023, approximately 57% of employees worldwide, eligible to be covered under collective bargaining agreements, were represented. PepsiCo maintains positive working relationships with union representatives.

For more information on how we engage our employees, see Employee engagement and Freedom of association.

Key matters of interest

Protecting the sense of belonging and well-being of our employees worldwide is one of PepsiCo’s top priorities. Providing a culture of inclusion is a key way we can support our employees' sense of belonging. Inclusion encourages connection, bringing your true self to work and greater levels of satisfaction and fulfillment at work. For PepsiCo as a company, inclusion is also a competitive advantage that fuels innovation, enhances our ability to attract and retain talent and strengthens our reputation. We are also committed to the continued growth and development of our employees and supporting a meaningful career, which is done through our attraction, retention and advancement strategy as well as our internal career development platform, which provides access to various trainings, guidance and activities. We want to sustain a high-caliber pipeline of talent to serve our communities.

Our 2023 internal survey results show that PepsiCo employees feel high levels of pride in working for PepsiCo, are energized by their work and are confident in PepsiCo’s future success. PepsiCo’s OHS Score stood at 78% with employee engagement at 81% and employee commitment at 75%. External benchmarking suggests that our employee engagement remains strong compared with other Fortune 500 peers. By listening to employees through this channel and acting to solve issues raised, we aim to ensure we are providing the best employment experience possible.

Governments

Importance to PepsiCo

PepsiCo’s business is affected by public policy at the local, state, national, regional, and global levels. Through public policy engagement, our objective is to promote a business environment that supports PepsiCo's ability to achieve sustainable growth in the years ahead and create beneficial outcomes for stakeholders and society.

How we engage

PepsiCo engages with governments and other public policy officials both directly and through various groups. PepsiCo monitors and abides by the changing laws and regulations governing lobbying activities, including the rules regarding national and sub-national lobbying registration and reporting obligations.

We are also a member of numerous industry and trade groups and partner with various non-profit organizations and non-governmental organizations. PepsiCo works with these groups because they represent the food and beverage industry and the business community on issues that are critical to PepsiCo’s business and its stakeholders. Importantly, such organizations help develop consensus among varied interests. PepsiCo currently does not belong to any organizations whose primary focus is the creation and promotion of model legislation. For more detail on our approach to Public Policy, see Public policy engagement, political activities and contribution guidelines.

Key matters of interest

We participate in public policy dialogues and share our expertise on key issues that support our business strategy and where we, or others, have identified that we can contribute ideas to solve policy issues. We aim to make constructive contributions that will lead to policies that help our business, our consumers, and society thrive in a sustainable fashion. In 2023, our key issues included agriculture, discriminatory taxation, trade, commodities, restrictions in the marketplace, food security, health and nutrition, packaging, environmental sustainability and artificial intelligence.

Communities

Importance to PepsiCo

We know that our company can only succeed when the society we serve flourishes. Supporting our local communities is an important part of operating as a responsible business.

How we engage

PepsiCo uses a proactive and locally-tailored approach to community engagement. This builds local support in the communities where our employees live and work and helps us fulfill our commitment to corporate citizenship.

We are working to source crops and ingredients in a way that accelerates regenerative agriculture and strengthens farming communities and have set a goal of improving the livelihoods of 250,000 people by 2030, through dedicated programming aiming to support economic prosperity, farm and farm worker security and women’s economic empowerment. In pursuit of this goal and our broader Positive Agriculture agenda, we are working toward addressing systemic issues facing communities and ecosystems in priority landscapes, including deforestation; land and human rights; and economic viability.

In addition, through strategic partnerships and programs globally, the PepsiCo Foundation seeks to tackle the long-term challenges facing the global food system and do the most good for the most people. PepsiCo strives for tangible impact in the places where we live and work — collaborating with industry peers, local and international organizations and our employees to effect large-scale change in the spaces that matter to us and on issues of global importance.

Key matters of interest

Our philanthropic work focuses on supporting the essential elements of a sustainable food system:

• Targeting short- and long-term solutions to provide food security through our Food for Good ambition, expanded globally in 2021;
• Investing to address the safe water access needs of local communities surrounding our operations; and
• Providing our communities with the support they need to manage through these unpredictable times and build pathways to prosperity. In each market, our approach is customized to meet local needs.

The PepsiCo Foundation is feeding potential for people in our communities by unlocking access to nutritious food, safe water and economic opportunity. In 2023, the PepsiCo Foundation:

• Delivered more than 16 million meals to 371,000 people;
• Reached more than 450,000 female farmers and members of their communities;
• Helped more than 10 million people access safe water;
• Granted more than 845 scholarships to students in need; and
• Supported over 1,000 small businesses in the U.S.