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Challenged during a case competition to develop a strategy for distributing a new Frito-Lay snack at the 2026 World Cup, four Rutgers Business School graduate students put all their chips on the table to win first place.

The event takes place annually at Texas Christian University. The 24-hour contest invites graduate students from top business schools in the country to review a real-world supply chain case, brainstorm ideas and showcase their skills as they pitch solutions. The judging panel comprises supply chain industry leaders from major global corporations.

This year, the February competition attracted 20 teams. As the grand prize winners, Rutgers full-time MBAs Badri Venkatanathan, Pilar Grullón, Suman Venkat and Mansi Sheth received $14,000.

Case competitions are popular among business school students because they offer an opportunity to network and demonstrate how they can apply their classroom lessons to real-world problems and situations.

Each year, TCU aims to focus the contest on a different industry and new type of problem. The competition serves to highlight the variety of issues occurring in supply chains. Previous case study providers for the competition have included American Airlines, Chick-fil-A, Nike, Lockheed Martin and the National Restaurant Association.

For 2025, teams were asked to examine a real-world challenge that Frito-Lay, the official FIFA World Cup snack sponsor, is facing: launching a new product in conjunction with the 2026 World Cup. To devise a solution, students needed to forecast demand for an untested new product, address production capacity, and create a strategy for regional distribution across 16 geographies and 104 games.

Besides East Rutherford, where the final will take place, other World Cup host cities include Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco.

Tackling a challenge

Kari Reynolds is Frito Lay’s senior director for repack and e-commerce operations. “Being the case content provider was a huge benefit for Frito Lay. We were able to gain valuable strategies and tactics to employ and ensure we have every consumer’s favorite snack food at every World Cup game and destination,” she said.

As the Rutgers team worked on the case, they discovered that calculations needed to be based on snack-size products – not family-sized – for the forecasting models.

#RBSStudentSpotlight We have some exciting news to share! Three of our full-time MBA and one MS in Healthcare Analytics and Intelligence students won TCU’s Graduate Supply Chain Case 🏆Competition! Congratulations to Pilar, Badri, Suman, and Mansi! pic.twitter.com/YROYtDKCTE

— RU Business School (@RutgersBSchool) February 24, 2025

They also chose not to base their plan on a Super Bowl scenario, but instead included elements of Swiftonomics and the Messi Effect. That allowed the team to incorporate things they knew about the economics around Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour and the effect of Argentina soccer player Lionel Messi’s appearances at matches in Miami.

Additionally, their analysis projected snack demand for seven weeks leading up to the World Cup. That period includes long summer holiday weekends as well as the event’s opening and closing ceremonies. Recognizing the limited shelf space in stadium kiosks, the Rutgers MBAs proposed a fleet of small vans for quickly shuttling product from larger trucks parked outside the venue to keep supplies stocked.

Following the competition, Venkat said, “We went through a lot of different emotions, from holding our heads in our hands to extreme joy when we won.”

Rutgers Professor David Dreyfus assembled the team and served as advisor. “This competition is one of the premier graduate-level supply chain management case competitions in the nation,” Dreyfus said. “Our students competed and won against the best. I’m thrilled about their success and the recognition they have received.”