Carrefour withdraws PepsiCo products from sale. Including Lay’s chips

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The French supermarket chain Carrefour will not sell products belonging to the PepsiCo concern on four European markets. This is a reaction to “unacceptable price increases” – reports . These include not only carbonated drinks, but also Lay’s chips, Cheetos crisps and Lipton branded drinks.

Signs will appear on shelves with PepsiCo products in Carrefour stores in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium informing that the store will no longer stock the brand’s products “due to unacceptable price increases,” a spokesman for the French supermarket chain told .

Some PepsiCo products, such as Cheetos and 7Up, were not available at the Carrefour supermarket in the Paris suburb of Auteuil on Thursday, while others, such as Pepsi, were still on shelves next to the sign. According to the agency, customers at the Carrefour supermarket in the elegant 16th arrondissement of Paris reacted positively to this move.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” customer Edith Carpentier told . “I think there will be a lot of unsold products left on the shelves because they have become too expensive and they are all products we can do without,” she said.

PepsiCo did not respond to a request for comment. The U.S. company said in October it planned “modest” price increases this year as demand persists despite the increases, leading it to raise its 2023 earnings forecast for the third time in a row.

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This isn’t the first time supermarkets have removed products

Last year, grocery retailers in several countries, including Germany and Belgium, announced they were suspending orders from consumer goods companies due to price increases, a tactic used in price negotiations that have become more tense due to inflation.

Carrefour is one of the most active retailers in challenging large consumer products manufacturers and food companies on pricing. Last year, the chain ran a “shrinkflation” campaign, which involved placing warnings on products that had shrunk and cost more.

reports that in its efforts to reduce inflation, the French government has asked retailers and suppliers to end annual price negotiations in January, two months earlier than usual.

France is a unique market because it heavily regulates the retail sector, forcing supermarkets to negotiate prices with food and drink producers only once a year in an attempt to protect its agricultural industry. However, the last round of negotiations, which took place at the beginning of last year at the height of the inflation crisis, ended with very large price increases in all cases, which affected supermarkets’ turnover and made them willing to negotiate price reductions this time.

– We know that French supermarkets are very, very ready to remove customers from their lists if they don’t like the offers they are offered. Of course, this is a last resort, because no one will win if there are no goods on the shelves that people are looking for, said James Walton, chief economist at the Institute of Grocery Distribution.

Over recent years, PepsiCo products have also been missing from store shelves in Poland many times. Among others, in Biedronka, the largest chain in the country. They went out of stock for the first time in December 2021, they hit the shelves again at the end of 2022. The last time problems with their availability appeared in July 2023.

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