Pepsi is wrapping its 12-ounce cans in miniature NFL puffer jackets, the product of a new collaboration with Off Season, the sports-fashion label co-founded by designer Kristin Juszczyk and entrepreneur Emma Grede. The limited-run accessories — 15 styles, one per NFL team partner — feature working zippers, team-licensed colors and logos, and custom patches modeled after the brand's full-size outerwear. For operators running stadium concessions, sports bars, or tailgate-adjacent venues, this is a case study in how a beverage supplier is engineering trial and brand preference beyond traditional advertising.
The Activation Architecture
The program runs on three parallel tracks. A national sweepstakes at offseasonpepsisweeps.com accepts entries through November 30, seeding organic social amplification at no incremental cost to retail or foodservice partners. A Pepsi x Off Season Tailgate Tour places the can jackets in-hand at three stadium exteriors — Levi's Stadium (October 19), Lincoln Financial Field (November 8), and SoFi Stadium (November 25) — targeting high-density, high-dwell moments when purchasing decisions are made. The broader campaign umbrella, "Tailgating Deserves Pepsi," provides the season-long narrative that ties individual activations back to the core product proposition.
For venues that stock PepsiCo products, the intelligence here is structural: the brand is doing the demand-generation work at the point of fan excitement, not at the shelf. Operators benefit from pre-built consumer enthusiasm without managing the campaign themselves.
What This Signals for Foodservice and Brand Strategy
Legacy beverage brands increasingly treat sports-adjacent fashion as a growth-marketing channel, not a PR vanity play. Off Season, launched in January 2025, built early cultural credibility through celebrity and athlete adoption of Juszczyk's custom apparel — exactly the kind of earned-media flywheel that a paid campaign budget struggles to replicate. Pepsi is licensing that credibility for the tailgate and stadium occasion, which represents one of the highest-volume, highest-margin soft drink consumption windows in the calendar.
For operators evaluating beverage program partnerships and supplier negotiations, this type of activation is worth tracking. Suppliers who bring cultural programming — sweepstakes assets, on-site tour support, co-branded merchandise — add tangible value beyond volume rebates. As we've covered in our brand launch intelligence, the brands winning placement in competitive venue environments are increasingly those that offer operator-facing marketing support alongside product.
The collectible angle also matters for on-premise strategy. Scarcity-driven merchandise tied to beverage purchase is a proven mechanism for driving incremental ring at concession stands and in sports bars — a tactic more commonly associated with craft beer releases that major soft drink brands are now deploying with NFL-scale reach. Operators running watch-party programming or stadium-adjacent locations should note that consumer demand for these can jackets will be concentrated in the weeks surrounding the three tour stops, with residual sweepstakes-driven interest carrying through late November.
Gustavo Reyna, Vice President of Marketing at Pepsi, framed the intent plainly: the goal is to make the Pepsi can in a fan's hand part of their gameday identity, not just their beverage choice. That framing matters for operator intelligence on beverage trends — when a supplier invests in making the container itself a fashion object, they are building habitual brand association at one of the stickiest consumer occasions on the calendar.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
