Registry

Does Cheetos support Israel?

Owned by Frito-Lay Records for the parent company are kept separately.

Business presence documentedupdated 2026-09-26

Cheetos does business in Israel — we found records of its operations there, but no record of donations, aid, or a public statement of support. Every claim below links to its source.

Filed under: Food & beverage brands · Companies that support Israel

Background

Cheetos is a Frito-Lay brand of PepsiCo, and no donation, statement or campaign concerning Israel has been documented for the Cheetos brand itself. Its Israel link is industrial: the snack is made under licence at the Sderot plant of Strauss Frito Lay Ltd., the 50/50 joint venture between PepsiCo's Frito-Lay and Israel's Strauss Group — a joint venture, not a Cheetos subsidiary, so its actions belong to it. Parent-level items sit on the PepsiCo page: the PepsiCo Foundation's $1 million October 2023 pledge to humanitarian organizations serving both Israel and Gaza with 2-to-1 employee matching, and the $3.2 billion acquisition of Israel's SodaStream in 2018. Cheetos was invented in San Antonio, Texas, in 1948 — viral posts calling Frito-Lay snacks Israeli products have been rated false by fact-checkers, who note the brands simply trade under different names and licensees in different countries. The BDS movement's official target list names PepsiCo-owned SodaStream, not Cheetos. From October 2023 Egyptian consumer sites — among them shbabbek, Cairo24 and besraha — placed Cheetos on informal boycott lists, on the single ground that it is an American brand belonging to PepsiCo; none of them cites a donation, a payment or a statement, and Min Elasema noted on 21 October 2023 that Cheetos itself had announced nothing in favour of either side.

Wikipedia — Cheetos JLens (PepsiCo Foundation pledge) Haaretz (PepsiCo buys SodaStream) Fact Crescendo (Pepsi/Lay's not Israeli products) BDS movement — what to boycott Cairo24 — هل تدعم شيتوس دولة إسرائيل؟ (30 Oct 2023) Shbabbek — Cheetos and the boycott list (20 Oct 2023) Min Elasema — Cheetos has announced nothing either way (21 Oct 2023)

Timeline of documented records

19982002200620102014201820221999 — Partnership: Strauss Frito Lay Ltd. (50/50 joint venture with Israel's Strauss Group)Partnership19992023-10 — Operations in Israel: Sderot plant workers and the surrounding Gaza-border communitiesOperations in Israel2023-10

Documented records

TypeDateAmountRecipientSources
Partnership1999—Strauss Frito Lay Ltd. (50/50 joint venture with Israel's Strauss Group)
Cheetos is not made in Israel by PepsiCo or by any Cheetos entity: PepsiCo granted the Israeli company Elite (now the Strauss Group) the licence to make and sell Frito-Lay salty snacks locally, and in 1999 PepsiCo's Frito-Lay division took 50% of that business, creating the 50/50 joint venture Strauss Frito Lay Ltd. PepsiCo listed "Strauss Frito Lay Ltd. — Israel" in the subsidiaries exhibit filed with its 10-K, and Wikipedia records that PepsiCo "granted a license to the Strauss-Elite company to distribute the Cheetos snack." The acting company in Israel is therefore the joint venture, not the Cheetos brand and not PepsiCo alone.
Operations in Israel2023-10—Sderot plant workers and the surrounding Gaza-border communities
Cheetos for the Israeli market is produced at the Strauss Group / Frito-Lay joint venture plant in Sderot, a few kilometres from the Gaza border. About a week after the 7 October 2023 attack the joint venture restarted that plant, when factories in Sderot and Sha'ar HaNegev resumed work under army protection; managers went onto the production line, clean-up crews were sent to homes damaged by rocket fire and supply packages were delivered to employees' families. This is the joint venture's own operational and welfare action for its workforce and region — not a donation by PepsiCo, and not an act of the Cheetos brand.

Frequently asked questions

Did Cheetos donate money to Israel or Israeli causes?

We have no records of donations. What is on record is commercial activity in Israel (Partnership, Operations in Israel), which is not the same as support — see the records on this page.

Where does this information come from?

Every record on this page links to its source — news reports, official company statements, tax filings, or government records. 14 distinct sources are cited for Cheetos. Our methodology page explains the full verification process.

Sources & citations

Record last updated: 2026-09-26

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