Back in the early 1930s, when Charles Elmer Doolin started The Frito Company and Herman Lay started H.W. Lay & Company, they were establishing the groundwork for a snack empire. The two companies merged in 1961, and four years later joined forces with The Pepsi-Cola Company to create PepsiCo, which operates Frito-Lay as a subsidiary. This move brought Frito-Lay’s snack brands to a global audience.
Today, Frito-Lay, based in Plano, TX, is the largest internationally distributed snack company in the world with multiple billion-dollar brands in its lineup. The options at Frito-Lay span 30 brands that account for total annual sales of $15 billion.