Tapping into the ubiquitous at-home ordering trend, the Pepsi brand is forging new foodservice delivery partnerships with the launch of Pep’s Place “fast beverage restaurant.” The service caters only to consumers ordering online via popular delivery apps. 

Through this campaign, consumers can selec a Pepsi beverage of their choice online, which then prompts curated food items based on that beverage. 

Pep’s Place has launched selec locations around the US for delivery only, available through the PepsPlaceRestaurant website and major food aggregators including Uber Eats, Door Dash and Grub Hub.

“With the launch of Pep’s Place, we have designed a new ‘fast beverage’ restaurant delivery concept that features a menu and experience literally built around the idea of what foods go best with Pepsi, allowing consumers at home to fully optimize their meals,” says Todd Kaplan, VP of marketing at Pepsi.

FoodIngredientsFirst has reached out to PepsiCo for comment on the 30-day campaign.

Food pairings with Pepsi
As an example of what an ideal food and soft drink match would be, Pepsi highlights the bold cola profile and lemon citrus notes of Pepsi Zero Sugar “pairing gracefully” with a crisp and tangy chicken caesar salad. 

For consumers craving a tropical splash of Pepsi Mango, the drink’s fruity and floral tonalities are deemed complementary to a blend of mild chiles found in buffalo wing sauce.

In the ordering process, consumers selec from a bevy of Pepsi beverages.

They are then presented a menu curated with food pairings, which includes cheeseburgers, buffalo wings, Cajun chicken sandwiches, chopped pork sandwiches, spare ribs and chicken caesar salads.

Pepsi enters the dark kitchen concept
Pep’s Place does not cater to in-house dining, in line with lockdown measures. The trend of dark kitchens used by restaurant brands and virtual brands to prepare meals exclusively for the online delivery market has risen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dark kitchens offer restaurants the opportunity to pool resources and reduce overheads, increasing their capacity to better serve the consumer.

Indeed, even FMCG players established outside the space of home deliveries have been actively scaling up their activities in this field. Impossible Foods, for instance, launched a e-commerce site for its US consumers to purchase family-size quantities of the plant-based Impossible Burger.

New Omnichannel Eating
As foodservice and retail domains increasingly overlap, consumers can eat what they want, when and wher they want it. Consumers are seeking convenience, richer experiences and accessible indulgence.

Traditional hospitality is getting edged out during the COVID-19 timeline, particularly with the pandemic giving consumers more time to stay at home and sharpen their own culinary prowess. This has prompted Innova Market Insights to peg “New Omnichannel Eating” as a Top Trend for 2021 in F&B and “Home Delivery Haven” as a leading in packaging.

According to a recent survey by Innova Market Insights, 35 percent of global consumers have increased their home food delivery use since the virus outbreak (2021). Brazil is above average, with more than half (58 percent) of consumers turning to online purchasing.

prompted by lockdown measures, increased home cooking is driving the use of convenient meal kits/starters and more sophisticated ingredients, resulting in new food experiences.

Along with restaurant delivery growing, the trend allows consumers to directly access many specialty products that were previously only accessible via foodservice.