To celebrate the 65th anniversary of Barbie, Stacy’s Pita Chips teamed up with the iconic brand to shine a light on the strength and resilience of women. To inspire the next generation of women entrepreneurs, the Barbie Dream Gap Project and Stacy’s are donating $100,000 to the nonprofit organization Step Up. The Barbie Dream Gap Project gives $250,000 annually to nonprofit partners that support and mentor girls.

The donation to Step Up, which provides mentorship and programs to help girls define and achieve success, will go toward conferences in Los Angeles, Chicago, Nashville and New York to provide 1,000 hours of mentorship to middle school and high school girls. 

Stacy’s Pita Chips, a brand owned by Plano, Texas-based Frito-Lay North America, also launched limited-edition Barbie pink packaging. Started as a way to mark Women’s History Month in March, the partnership with Barbie will continue into the fall. This is not the first time Stacy’s Pita Chips has partnered with other companies to amplify women’s voices and stories past, present and future. The brand has also worked with the United Way, Girl Scouts, Reese Witherspoon’s media company Hello Sunshine and others. 

“As a woman-founded business, supporting women entrepreneurs is in the DNA of Stacy’s Pita Chips,” said Rhasheda Boyd, vice president of marketing, Frito-Lay North America. “We hope to have an even bigger impact in 2025, supporting more women and finding ways to continue to elevate the need of women-founded businesses.”

Stacy’s Pita Chips’ roots began to take hold on the streets of Boston in 1997 when Stacy Madison opened her food cart called Stacy’s D’lights. With an appetite for healthy eating and a passion for making great food, Madison sold healthy sandwiches rolled in pita bread. Using the day’s leftover pita bread, Madison would bake pita chips and hand them out to waiting customers as an incentive to stay in line. 

When word got out about her pita chips, demand grew, leading Madison to start Stacy’s Pita Chips. After growing the business into a well-known snack brand, Madison decided to sell Stacy’s Pita Chips to PepsiCo in 2005 for a reported $243 million. Stacy’s Pita Chips now operates under PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay North America division.

In 2017, Stacy’s Pita Chips created the Stacy’s Rise Project, which has donated more than $1 million in funding to women entrepreneurs. The project provides women grants, resources, mentoring and a network of support. The Rise Project expanded to Canada in 2023. 

“Staying true to our roots, we launched the Stacy’s Rise Project in 2017 as a program dedicated to supporting women founders through mentorship, community and funding,” Boyd said. “Through our program, we also focus on driving awareness of the needs of women-founded businesses. Funding remains a huge issue among women entrepreneurs. While women own almost half of all businesses in the United States, they receive only 2% of venture capital funding.”