Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said Frito-Lay’s plan for a $200 million expansion of its facility in southeast Texas is a sign that the pandemic-driven recession and inflation have reached its bottom.
Johnson said the news is also good for his snacking habit.
“This is all the evidence we needed that things have turned a corner,” Johnson said in a June 13 Twitter post. “Flaming Hot Funyuns are the best snack chips on the planet.”
The news is also good for fans of other Frito-Lay products, which include Lays, Ruffles, Fritos, Cheetos, Cracker Jack, Tostitos and Grandma’s cookies.
Frito-Lay is an $18 billion convenient foods subsidiary of PepsiCo.
Frito-Lay expects to create 160 new jobs with the expansion of its Rosenberg facility, according to a joint company and Fort Bend County announcement issued five days before Johnson’s Twitter post.
Rosenburg is about 270 miles northeast of Dallas.
The investment is expected to add two manufacturing lines for Funyuns, as well as tortilla chips, and in addition to increased capacity in Frito-Lay’s Rosenberg warehouse. The expansion is expected to be complete by 2023, according to the announcements.
Frito-Lay’s Rosenberg facility currently employs more than 750 full-time plant and fleet associates who work to produce more than 117 million pounds of snacks every year.
“We’ve called Rosenberg home for nearly 40 years,” PepsiCo Foods North America Supply Chain Senior Vice President Laura Maxwell said in the announcement. “Throughout that time, the support of Fort Bend County has helped us invest in the right areas so that we can continue to grow and provide jobs to the community. The Rosenberg site has the largest footprint of any Frito-Lay facility in Texas, producing snacks for Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas and Georgia, and several other parts of the country when we hit times of peak demand. We thank Fort Bend County for bringing investments like this to life.”