PepsiCo

PepsiCo, Inc. combines beverages and savory snacks. Frito-Lay is the unusual piece: in the United States it is the dominant salty-snack supplier, with a direct-store-delivery route that smaller chip brands cannot copy. Pepsi beverages compete with Coca-Cola through exclusive bottlers and fountain contracts.

Direct store delivery means PepsiCo employees stock the shelf and often influence the diagram. A rival chip brand that uses a warehouse distributor gets worse placement. That vertical system is the snack theory of harm: not a cartel, a route system.

Fountain and cooler exclusivity in restaurants and stadiums is the drink theory. A venue that signs one cola system usually cannot pour the other. Those contracts are vertical restraints. They are legal unless they foreclose so much of the market that a rival cannot reach customers.

PepsiCo has bought energy-drink and snack brands and has faced deal reviews when a target was the independent alternative in a niche, such as a better-for-you chip or a sports drink.

Frito-Lay's route system is a barrier. Warehouse-delivered brands struggle for the same shelf.

Exclusive fountain contracts allocate restaurants to one cola system.

Cooler-exclusivity agreements in small stores can leave no cold space for a third beverage.

Snack acquisitions remove independents that were the only other brand in a sub-category.

The chip shelf looks abundant and is often one company's lineup in several bags. Prices move together because the route system sets them.

A restaurant that wants both colas on the gun often cannot get that contract. The diner never sees the exclusivity clause.