Secret Documents Show Pepsi and Walmart Colluded to Raise Food Prices

Price collusion is illegal too, but happens all the time. There being a law for it just makes the rare fine a cost of doing business.

"Legality" has never stopped big companies from doing these things. Google, Apple, Meta, etc has been receiving fines all day long and they still continue what they do.

To give an example Yum! brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, etc) was formed as a subsidiary of PepsiCo. Although PepsiCo has divested from Yum, their pre-existing relationship is why these restaurants only serve Pepsi's soft drinks.

Deal-making is also why you see patterns like this emerge in other places such as convenience stores that only sell beverages from the Coca-cola company (i.e. higher volume sales from just one supplier yields a better discount than splitting sales across multiple suppliers). It's relatively rarer to see more than one beverage supplier at a restaurant, club or convenience outlet.

There's a bunch of pricing stuff (typically the bottler sells syrup and rents dispensers and may supply drinkware, and you get discounts on everything when you buy more syrup, and you get advertising subsidies when you put the brand logo in your ad, etc), but there's also logistics. More options means a bigger soda fountain and probably more space storing syrup.

I'm not sure I've ever seen mixed brands in a single dispenser (other than 7up+DrPepper which is bottled regionally by Coke bottlers in some regions and Pepsi bottlers in others; so you might see Coke with 7up and DrPepper or with Sprite and MrPibb). But, rarely, I've seen dispensers from both. Mostly at convenience stores and also the Yahoo employee cafeteria at the Sunnyvale HQ on First Ave (which they left some time ago). Some restaurants that don't have a fountain will stock cans from multiple brands, too.

All that said, from my life experience, very few people express a strong preference, giving customers a choice probably isn't worth the effort.

- directly owned and managed by the brewery

- owned by the brewery and leased to a manager, like a franchise

- independent, but contracted exclusively

- genuinely independent

Contracted pubs may also have limited supplies of "guest ales". Usually there's sufficient local competition to keep the pubs good, but local monocultures can also be a problem.

Restaurant owners will sign a contract with a distributor to buy only from them, and in exchange get discounts, free equipment rentals such as drink fridges and beer taps, and things like sunshades, tables and chairs, signage, etc.

Pricing discrimination combined with monopsony(single large buyer) or monopoly ( single large seller) powers is not market efficient. It leads to higher prices by end consumers. Price discrimination via collusion + Walmarts monopsony in grocery industry violates that 1930s act and is illegal

no, not clear at all.. it is a system that filters. "rich people" go broke all the time, Britain too.. There are serious structural problems certainly but that does not describe them

Pepsi is exchanging profit for market-share. Be serious. Everyone else is just charging the standard price.

Market failures ought to be accounted for with regulation (they often are, that's what Liberalism is for), but this is not one.

The unessential garbage fuelling our obesity crisis has no place in the conversation about the affordability crisis whilst policy-makers and armchair experts are mulling a sugar tax, which would just raise the price. Notwithstanding, profit margins at grocery stores are not large in the first place. The reason profits are breaking records is that population is also breaking records, and customers are spending more on boutique animal alternative or organic boxed products. Margins on produce are as thin as ever. Canned black beans and soup are not making their billions.

This is circular. You are just describing a selective/privileged discount, again.

Food Lion could of course sell some items at a loss (Walmart did this, to gain market share and beat out smaller businesses). Costco continues to sell hot dogs at a loss. But that probably wouldn't work for Pepsi products in this context; fortunately, there are other products beyond Pepsi.