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I was supposed to write about Latinx mental health awareness this week, but then the cheet’ hit the fan.
On Sunday, The Times published a story written by business reporter Sam Dean with the provocative headline “The man who didn’t invent Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.” It asserted that Richard Montañez, a former Frito-Lay executive who worked his way from being a janitor to the C-suite through sheer ganas and Mexican American ingenuity, didn’t actually invent the iconic snack.
Dean used “interviews with more than a dozen former Frito-Lay employees, the archival record and Frito-Lay itself” to support the story. He also reached out to Montañez on multiple occasions to get him on the record but never got a response. The Times stands by Dean’s reporting.
For years, a janitor claimed he invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Frito-Lay says it’s ‘urban legend’
The Plano-based company says the snack food was pioneered at its corporate headquarters.
Flamin Hot Cheetos will be the star in a movie directed by Eva Longoria called Flamin Hot. (David Woo / Staff Photographer)
4:45 PM on May 18, 2021 CDT
For a decade, former Frito-Lay employee Richard Montañez has told the story of inventing Flamin’ Hot Cheetos while working as a janitor for the company. A biopic about his life is even set to be turned into a movie soon and directed by Texas native Eva Longoria.
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The publisher of Richard Montañez’s upcoming memoir, “Flamin’ Hot: The Incredible True Story of One Man’s Rise From Janitor to Top Executive,” is moving ahead with the book after a Los Angeles Times investigation found Montañez was not involved in the creation of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
“During his 40+ years at Frito Lay, Richard Montañez repeated the story of his involvement with this product hundreds of times, in speeches, books, and media interviews,” Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher of Portfolio Books, said in a statement Tuesday. “Only now, just as his book is announced, are we suddenly hearing an alternate narrative about the development of this product, which seeks to diminish Richard’s contribution and to question the details of long-ago events.”
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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.