Richard Montañez life story is being produced as a film called Flamin' Hot by Searchlight (Photo: Richard Montañez)
Setting the record straight
By Bel Hernandez
UPDATE May 21, 2021 at 12:08 pm (PT):
Just before Latin Heat was to publish this second article on the controversy that began when the Los Angeles Times published the article written by Sam Dean, Pepsico put out an official statement.
Here is the statement:
“Far from being an urban legend, Richard had a remarkable 40-plus-year career at PepsiCo and made an incredible impact on our business and employees and continues to serve as an inspiration today. His insights and ideas on how to better serve Hispanic consumers were invaluable and directly resulted in the success of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. To be clear, we have no reason to doubt the stories he shares about taking the initiative to create new product ideas for the Cheetos brand and pitching them to past PepsiCo leaders.
We also know there was a separate division team developing a spicy product offering for Cheetos and other snack brands that were tested in market and found their way into permanent products on store shelves, including Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
Different work streams tackling the same product without interacting occasionally occurred in the past when divisions operated independently and were not the best at communicating. However, just because we can’t draw a clear link between them, doesn’t mean we don’t embrace all of their contributions and ingenuity, including Richard’s.
Richard is an important part of PepsiCo’s history and the success of the company. He is an inspiration and his story cannot be belittled. We regret the confusion that has come from the recent speculation, but most importantly want Richard to know he is valued and cared for among PepsiCo’s employees and we only wish him happiness and success.
So, who invented the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos? It turns out the Chicano’s version of the story was true.
Good question for the academics. There are all kinds of stories out there in public about who invented the burrito and other Mexican food delicacies. Ask a Latino, and they will tell you the real story. It’s a simple story.
One thing we know for sure is that centuries ago, Latinos started shaking up chicharrones (pork rinds) in a brown paper bag, added a splash of lime with chili powder and salt. This was, and remains a cultural Mexican delicacy. Academics might call this a poor man’s snack. We call it a delicacy. Just one taste can take you all the way back to your village in Mexico, or to the agricultural fields of Buckeye, Arizona, or even your old neighborhood in Boyle Heights, California.
This snack was created long before Frito-Lay existed. Before the name, Frito-Lay was even conceived. Chicharrones are pork rinds that are cut into small squares and deep-fried with manteca (lard) until crunchy and crackly. Folklore, like chicharrones, has been part of Latino cuisine and culture for over a century. What Frito Lay did when they introduced Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, with the help of its number one Chicano innovator and employee, Richard Montañez, was take an ancient poor Mexican snack and give it a modern-day appeal to the masses. This is called Chicano innovation.
Folklore, hot spicy and juicy gossip, and “envidia” (jealousy) have been part of the Latino culture for centuries. In the olden days, Latinos would gossip over the fence or at the kitchen table. The gossip would take on a life of its own. Today, hot spicy gossip moves faster than a California brush fire. Sometimes the gossip can lead to the demise of one’s character and other times it elevates a person to prominence.
In the case of Montañez, he is a man who started out as an hourly paid janitor at a Frito-Lay/Pepsico plant and rose to a highly respected executive, not only within the company rank and file but also in the Latino community. Montanez became the force behind one of the most popular spicy snack in America and beyond, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos
Latin Heat is taking a deep dive into how the creation of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos became a marketing phenomenon and turned into a controversy over who invented the popular snack.
In 1967 Frito-Lay built a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that included a Mexican revolutionary with a sombrero, handlebar mustache, gold tooth, and a thick Spanish accent — they called him the Frito Bandito (bandit). He carried two pistols and robbed people of their Fritos corn chips at gunpoint.
After two Latino organizations protested the use of this stereotypical image, Frito-Lay retired the Frito Bandito and began rebuilding their trust with the Latino consumer, making sure to stay away from stereotypes.
Frito-lay has learned the importance of the Latino market, which generates a $1.7 trillion annual GDP. The company invests heavily to court the largest ethnic consumer market in the U.S. Latino celebrities have proven to be a very effective way to promote their brands. In 2020 Pepsico’s (Frito-Lay’s parent company) Superbowl half-time show featured JLO and Shakira with performances by popular reggaeton artists Bad Bunny and J Balvin. It was a halftime show that made Latinos proud. Pepsico has also engaged Daddy Yankee, Rick Martin, and Juanes to keep their brand front and center. Pepsico and its subsidiary Frito-Lay pride themselves on being a corporation that cares about the Latino market.
It’s no wonder Montañez rose up the corporate ladder to ultimately become director of multicultural sales and community activation for PepsiCo North America, as the company’s expert in Hispanic marketing. How he got there started when he pitched his idea for new spicy snacks to the top brass at the Rancho Cucamonga, California Frito-Lay plant. Flamin’ Hot Cheetos became their best-selling snack. That is a reason Montanez is known as “The Godfather of Hispanic Marketing.”
For nearly twenty years, Frito-Lay would fly Montañez across the country to promote Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, with each impassioned speech he gave, he played up Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to a captive audience. The popularity of the brand has extended into fashion, events, video content, and beyond.
In 2013 Montañez decided to document his story of how a Chicano janitor rose through the ranks to reach a position of a high-level PepsiCo executive in his book “A Boy, A Burrito, and a Cookie“. Frito-Lay was aware of the book and knew that as Montanez promoted his book, he was also promoting the Flamin’ Hot brand.
In the book, Montañez recounts how he was inspired after hearing then PepsiCo CEO, Roger Enrico, mention his “I Own the New Frito-Lay” campaign where employees were encouraged to think like owners. He began thinking of ideas for a new product that would appeal to Latinos. He recalls the exact moment the idea came to him. He was with family when he heard a street vendor selling “elotes,” another Mexican delicacy that consists of corn on a stick covered with mayo, butter, lime, cheese, and chili powder. He looked at the corn, and he says it looked like a big Cheeto to him, and that was when the idea hit him. He felt sure that chili-covered Mexican flavored products would appeal to Latinos and anyone that loved spicy food.
In an interview with Sarah Aida Gonzalez for NPR’s Planet Money podcast, Montanez recalled that in 1990 he met Al Carey, who at that time was the division president of Frito-Lay West, based in the Bay Area. He paid a visit to the Rancho Cucamonga, California plant where Montanez worked. He got the courage to tell Carey about his new spicy product idea and was encouraged by him to call Enrico. In the podcast, Patti Rueff, Enrico’s executive assistant, talks about the initial phone conversation she had with Montanez. She confirms that, at first, she thought she was talking to someone in the position of executive, director, or manager. When Montanez told her he was the janitor, she was taken aback but put him through to Enrico.
This is the same story Montañez tells during his speaking engagements and press interviews across the country and he did so with the full knowledge and blessing of PepsiCo.
Somehow the story got the attention of the Los Angeles Times, and they assigned writer Sam Dean to a year-long investigative article.
On May 16, 2021, the Los Angeles Times published the article under the headline, “The man who didn’t invent Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.” The story was picked up by several news outlets who went with the L.A. Times premise that Montanez was a fraud who had been taking credit for something he did not create.
The official statement sent by Frito-Lays to the L.A. Times was direct and definitive:
“None of our records show that Richard was involved in any capacity in the Flamin’ Hot test market. We have interviewed multiple personnel who were involved in the test market, and all of them indicate that Richard was not involved in any capacity in the test market. That doesn’t mean we don’t celebrate Richard,” the statement concluded, “but the facts do not support the urban legend.”
According to Dean, he interviewed several Frito-Lay employees for his article. However, none that he mentioned had ever worked at the Cucamonga, California Frito-Lay plant where Montañez was based.
It was 2018, Lynne Greenfeld, a former employee of Frito-Lay, told Dean that she had seen a video where Montanez claimed to have invented Flamin’ Hot. She called the company to complain that Montanez was taking credit for something she and her Frito-Lay Midwest divisions team had created.
A centerpiece of Dean’s article is what he feels is a discrepancy in Montañez’s narrative. He points out that Montañez has often said that the meeting with Enrico took place in 1990, but that Enrico did not become CEO of Pepsico until 1991 and therefore Montanez’s story is suspect. Montanez, told us that he admits that he misspoke on the date and that the year was actually 1992, but that although he may have gotten his timeline wrong, it does not negate the fact that the meeting took place and that Enrico did attend the meeting at the Rancho Cucamonga plant as corroborated by Rueff, in the NPR podcast.
However, there are several people Dean interviewed that did corroborate Montañez’s story or parts of it, one of them being Carey, who is now the retired and former CEO of PepsiCo. He emphatically told Dean, “Of all the people who are in PepsiCo or around PepsiCo, I have the most experience,” he continued. “I can promise you for sure there was no brand development, no brand launched called Flamin’ Hot Cheetos,” Carey said, adding that if there was a prior spicy product on the market, it was reformulated to match Montañez’s sample product. Carey also states that he was not aware of any national brand of Flamin’ Hot products at this time and still credits the Southern California test markets that put the brand on the trajectory of success.
A trademark for Flamin’ Hot was in fact filed in 1990. However, technically it doesn’t prove that this product was rolled out nationally, only that they were using the name. And according to a trademark search, there is no Lynne Greenfeld listed on the trademark, only the company. This does not take away from the work Lynn Greenfeld claims to have done, but it also doesn’t negate Richard’s experience or story either.
The article’s timing comes when Montanez’s story is expanding onto a much larger platform. Based on his first book, Montañez’s life story will be turned into a film that actress/director Eva Longoria will direct. Searchlight Pictures is producing from a screenplay written by Lewis Colick and Linda Yvette Chavez and is set to start shooting on June 11 in New Mexico. In addition, Montanez has expanded his memoirs into a second book entitled “Flamin’ Hot: The Incredible True Story of One Man’s Rise from Janitor to Top Executive” and is set to release on June 15, 2021, by publisher Portfolio Books.
Screenwriter Colick was the first person to openly say what was in the minds of many of Montanez’s supporters and the Latino community. In an interview for NBCNews.com, Colick called the Times story “a hit job on a really fine upstanding individual who’s an inspiration to the Latino community for justifiable reasons.”
Frito Lay gave the studio, screenwriter, and producers a tour of the Rancho Cucamonga factory in 2018 and a virtual tour of another factory in Georgia early this year. “They laid out the red carpet for us,” Colick recalls. “There was no talk of, ‘You guys are writing a movie about a guy who had nothing to do with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.’” So why the 180?
A growing number of community leaders are also speaking out about what is being perceived as the erasure of a lifetime of Montanez’s accomplishments. The list includes American labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farmworker Association, actorvist Edward James Olmos, and farmworker and activist David Damian Figueroa, among others. They have begun to question why Frito-Lay is abandoning their support for one of their most spirited brand ambassadors.
On social media, the tide began to turn slowly towards questioning the timing and the purpose of the article as well as feeling that Frito-Lay is essentially turning its back on a former Latino employee.
Co-workers who knew Montañez at the Rancho Cucamonga plant began posting their recollection of events that confirm, in part, some of Montanez’s claims.
One such person was Mike Fuller, who identified himself as the former Product Supply Mgr at Frito-Lay on Facebook posted:
“I know Richard Montanez from the time I spent at the Cucamonga Plant and was at the plant when he presented his Hispanic flavor ideas to Roger Enrico and several other upper-level FL managers. Richard went from working in Cucamonga processing/packaging operations to the Headquarters Marketing Team to support Multicultural Sales. Roger Enrico is dead, and very few people left in Frito Lay now that go back to the late 1980s to mid-1990s timeframe that can provide a basic accounting [on] how things went down. The media has picked this story up and is running it with a very slanted view, in my opinion.”
Leah Box, another co-worker also posted on Facebook:
“I had many face-to-face conversations with Richard during his personal R&D crusade to meet the needs of the Hispanic market in LA. I have anecdotes that I could share that would add great validity and interest to his story’!!!
For example, the Senior VP of R&D was NOT interested in hearing the ideas of an hourly waged employee. (let’s be real – arrogance idd occur in FL [Frito Lay]. Richard met with him in person in Plano to pitch his idea at least one time that I am aware of. While in his office, Richard took Snack Manufacturing magazines to get ideas on how to mass-produce and distribute snack products with hot/spicey (sic) seasonings. My guess is there are 100’s of us who could corroborate Richard’s story.“
The support is strong from the Latino community who perceive this as a takedown of one of their heroes. Richard Montanez is a big part of the Latino community on a national level. Many have been inspired by his story, which proves that there is no telling what you can accomplish if you put in the work.
“Richard’s history is the history of millions of us in the Latino community who have risen from deep poverty and oppression,” said Figueroa. “Those of us that grew up with nothing and have made something of ourselves serve as inspiration for others in our community. Our most valuable asset is our word (palabra) and our reputations. Richard is a Chicano innovator”.
Montanez and his wife Judy, who he credits with cooking up the chili recipe up in their kitchen, are devastated to be so publicly called liars. They don’t feel the article presented both sides equally and feel betrayed by a company that they loved being a part of.
What is getting lost in this whole conversation is that Richard Montanez knew that the Hispanic market was the future. He had the vision to know how to tap into that future, the company recognized that and as a result, catapulted him into the executive suites. Roger Enrico didn’t believe in him for his recipe, he believed in him for his vision. While this debate about the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos may never end, what isn’t debatable is Richard Montanez’s contributions to this company, to his community and to his culture.
Even before the Los Angeles Times article was published, during his podcast interview with NPR’s Planet Money, Montanez admitted to Sarah that although he loved his amazing journey at Frito-Lay/Pepsico, he realized he was always “tolerated, never celebrated.” With a bit of wistfulness, he adds, “You’re always going to love your company more than they will ever love you.”
