We've all heard the story about how Flamin' Hot Cheetos were created. A janitor that worked at Frito-Lay and he pitched the idea of the chips and from there ended up working as an executive for the company! That story is so amazing that it's even being turned into a movie! But is it true?!
The Los Angeles Times just released an article that is claiming the story it's not entirely true. This is what journalist Sam Dean wrote in his article about Richard Montañez. He interviewed former Frito-Lay employees who worked for the company during that time. Lynne Greenfeld—a junior employee was assigned the responsibility of developing the Flamin’ Hot brand after its initial launch in 1989. And she said Richard was not part of the team.
In a statement toVariety in response to theTimes report, Montañez said he was Frito-Lay’s “greatest ambassador” and offered an explanation as to why some documentation related to his story could be missing.
“I wasn’t a supervisor,” he said. “I was the least of the least. I think that might be one of the reasons why they don’t have any documentation on me. Why would they?”
In a statement included in theTimes piece, a rep for Frito-Lay—the PepsiCo subsidiary responsible for Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos, and more—said "that no records show Montañez to have been involved “in any capacity” with the Flamin’ Hot cheetos test market. Furthermore, the Frito-Lay rep added, multiple people associated with the test market said that Montañez was not involved." - "That doesn’t mean we don’t celebrate Richard, but the facts do not support the urban legend,” the rep said.