How a classically trained chef is elevating global food at PepsiCo

How a classically trained chef is elevating global food at PepsiCo

Pat Clifford wants to cook for you, no matter the size of the table or who's seated at it. He's worked aboard a British Royal Navy ship, cooked for the royal family in a Michelin-star kitchen, and created snacks enjoyed by people around the world. No matter where he's cooked, it all comes back to the same thing: the joy he gets when someone takes a satisfying bite of something he helped create.

In a kitchen at PepsiCo's offices in Leicester, England, Clifford is hard at work imagining foods that could one day land on store shelves. And every idea, whether it's a bold new flavor for an iconic potato chip brand or inspiration for something entirely new, starts the same way: with a recipe.

"You need a really good starting point," Clifford said. "It has to start in the kitchen."

That may surprise somebody enjoying a bowl of their favorite chips. But every product represents a journey that can take months - or even years - driven by teams deeply focused on how ingredients, global trends, and consumer preferences come together.

For Clifford, who is now a Product Development Principal Scientist on PepsiCo's R&D team, that journey started long before PepsiCo.

From home cooking to high-stakes kitchens

Growing up in England, Clifford found his way to cooking early and quickly realized it was about more than food.

"My mother wasn't necessarily blessed with good cooking skills, so I tended to get quite heavily involved," he said with a laugh.

That early exposure sparked something. He furthered that interest in a home economics class and later with professional training in culinary school. Being able to cook, he realized, was about more than just food.

"It's a fundamental life skill," he said. "It's very communal." After culinary school, Clifford joined the Royal Navy, where he learned discipline, teamwork, and leadership - skills that followed him into London's high-pressure restaurant scene. At the prestigious Connaught hotel, he worked across every station and managed nearly 20 chefs by age 23.

"We all had a common goal. We were in it together," he said.

Seeing the world - and wider opportunity

After traveling across Southeast Asia with his partner, Clifford's global experiences shaped a shift in his career. He moved into food development, creating recipes designed for large-scale manufacturing and sale.

"You're still using all of those skills that you learn as a chef, but you're not only feeding 50 people in a restaurant," he explained. "You're feeding a million people a week."

Finding his place at PepsiCo

In 2016, after returning to school to study food science, Pat joined PepsiCo. Early in his time at the company, Pat saw opportunity to fill new spaces with the work he was doing so he rewrote his own role.

"There was a job specification, but it was pretty loose," he recalled. "I said to my manager, 'I'm going to write you my job description.' At the end of the 100 days, I'd written this beautiful job specification and I said, 'Can I go away and do this, please? Because I think this is what you need.'"

It has paid off. Pat's work has taken him into kitchens, consumer focus groups, and global markets to translate trends into PepsiCo products people love.

And turning an idea into a finished product is no small feat. Depending on the complexity, including if they need to build new equipment or source new ingredients at scale, the process can vary in how long it takes. It starts with inspiration and evolves through multiple rounds of testing, refinement, and consumer feedback.

For him, the real challenge isn't spotting trends - it's making them work for everyone: "What do I see from that trend, or those ingredients, or that particular cuisine that I can translate to that particular brand? Because I'm thinking about mass-market appeal," he added. "What do we take from that, and how can we then channel into something for lots of people?"

His work has helped bring globally inspired flavors to brands like Walkers Sensations and innovations like seaweed-based snacks for Off The Eaten Path, while also adapting recipes to meet evolving dietary preferences.

"That's where it gets really creative," Clifford said.

A career of cooking up happiness

Pat's love of food began in a family kitchen. Today, he's cooking for a much larger table. Across PepsiCo's portfolio, products are enjoyed by more than a billion people around the world every day, a reach that still amazes him. But the goal remains the same.

"If you can make people smile while they're eating," he said, "you've done your job."

This story is part of A Unique Flavor - a series spotlighting incredible people across PepsiCo with bold ambitions and standout talents.

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