Donald Kendall, who built PepsiCo into a soda and snack-food giant, dies

GREENWICH — Donald Kendall, a former fountainsyrup salesman who engineered the merger of PepsiCola and Frito-Lay, then built PepsiCo into one of America’s largest companies while selling soda to the Soviet Union as part of a Cold War gambit, died Sept. 19 at his home in Greenwich. He was 99.

His family announced the death in a statement and did not give a cause.

As president and chief executive of Pepsi-Cola and its successor company, PepsiCo, Kendall turned a middling beverage business into a globe-spanning rival of Coca-Cola. From 1963 until his retirement in 1986, he brought Pepsi to China and the Soviet Union, broadened the company’s portfolio by acquiring fastfood chains such as Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and helped pioneer the modern diet soda with the development of Diet Pepsi.

Kendall became a global ambassador for American business, chairing groups including the National Alliance of Businessmen and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He also developed close ties with presidents and foreign dignitaries, staying at Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s dacha, donating money to Richard Nixon’s presidential campaigns and helping focus Nixon’s ire on Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was soon ousted in a coup.

For all his interest in politics and the arts — Kendall fished with dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and built a sprawling, publicly accessible sculpture garden at PepsiCo’s headquarters in Purchase, N.Y. — he remained deeply focused on his company’s day-to-day operations, espousing and embodying a combative “Pepsi spirit” while growing revenue from $200 million to $ 7.6 billion.

Kendall had a Pepsi at breakfast, avoided saying the word “Coke” whenever possible and, when waiters told him Pepsi was not on the menu, pitched them on his company’s flagship product.

When he delivered the commencement address at Western Kentucky University, his alma mater, he noted that one of the first things he saw upon arrival “was the Coca-Cola vending machine — and I didn’t particularly consider that a friendly act.”