Richard Montañez has for years told a story of how he dreamed up Flamin’ Hot Cheetos while working as a Frito-Lay janitor. The archival record, former employees and Frito-Lay itself say otherwise.
Sam Dean, Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2021
For the last decade, Richard Montañez has been telling the story of how he invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. The world has been eating it up.
It goes like this: He was working as a janitor at Frito-Lay’s Rancho Cucamonga plant when he dreamed up a chile-covered Cheeto and believed in himself enough to call up the chief executive to pitch his spicy idea.
Corporate backstabbers tried to sabotage Montañez for stepping out of line, but he out-hustled them, driven by a hunger to succeed. Flamin’ Hots became a runaway hit, and Montañez rose through the ranks and became an icon.
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Fuelled by the redder than red dust of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, a Frito-Lay janitor rose through the ranks to become a high-powered executive. So goes the against-all-odds story of Richard Montañez, self-proclaimed creator of the wildly popular spicy snack.
“The Godfather of Hispanic Marketing” has been telling this tale since 2007. About how, after working the graveyard janitor shift at the Frito-Lay plant in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., he took home a bag full of plain Cheetos. Inspired by elote vendors, he used his wife Judy’s recipe for chili sauce to season them. “After an intense process of experimenting and testing” in his kitchen, Flamin’ Hot was born.
Article content
Fuelled by the redder than red dust of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, a Frito-Lay janitor rose through the ranks to become a high-powered executive. So goes the against-all-odds story of Richard Montañez, self-proclaimed creator of the wildly popular spicy snack.
“The Godfather of Hispanic Marketing” has been telling this tale since 2007. About how, after working the graveyard janitor shift at the Frito-Lay plant in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., he took home a bag full of plain Cheetos. Inspired by elote vendors, he used his wife Judy’s recipe for chili sauce to season them. “After an intense process of experimenting and testing” in his kitchen, Flamin’ Hot was born.
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