Richard Montañez did not truly invent Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos

For the final decade, Richard Montañez has been telling the story of how he invented Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos. The world has been consuming 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 sufficient to name up the chief govt to pitch his spicy concept.

Company backstabbers tried to sabotage Montañez for stepping out of line, however he out-hustled them, pushed by a starvation to succeed. Flamin’ Hots turned a runaway hit, and Montañez rose by way of the ranks and have become an icon.

Watching his many recorded talking engagements, it’s straightforward to see why his story has taken off.

Montañez is a charismatic speaker, and his story of a Mexican American underdog whose ingenuity conquered the company world is a rags-to-riches fable baked into the origin of a wildly standard snack.

With their spicy kick and neon-red taste mud, Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos have impressed viral rap movies, Instagram-worthy menu objects and streetwear designs. Faculties have banned the snack altogether over issues about its recognition with youngsters. Clear income numbers are onerous to return by, however practically each main Frito-Lay line, from Smartfood popcorn to Funyuns, now has a Flamin’ Scorching selection in the marketplace.

Montañez has constructed a profitable second profession out of telling and promoting this story, showing at occasions for Goal, Walmart, Harvard and USC, amongst others, and commanding charges of $10,000 to $50,000 per look.

His second memoir, “Flamin’ Scorching: The Unbelievable True Story of One Man’s Rise from Janitor to Prime Govt,” is out in June from an imprint of Penguin Random Home.

A biopic based mostly on his life, to be directed by Eva Longoria and produced by Christian super-producer DeVon Franklin for Searchlight Photos, is ready to start filming this summer time. Each the ebook and the film had been bought after bidding wars — Montañez’s story is undeniably sizzling.

There’s only one drawback: Montañez didn’t invent Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos, based on interviews with greater than a dozen former Frito-Lay staff, the archival file and Frito-Lay itself.

“None of our data present that Richard was concerned in any capability within the Flamin’ Scorching take a look at market,” Frito-Lay wrote in a press release to The Instances, in response to questions on an inner investigation whose existence has not been beforehand disclosed. “We now have interviewed a number of personnel who had been concerned within the take a look at market, and all of them point out that Richard was not concerned in any capability within the take a look at market.

“That doesn’t imply we don’t have fun Richard,” the assertion continued, “however the information don’t help the city legend.”

Flamin’ Hots had been created by a crew of hotshot snack meals professionals beginning in 1989, within the company workplaces of Frito-Lay’s headquarters in Plano, Texas. The brand new product was designed to compete with spicy snacks bought within the inner-city mini-marts of the Midwest. A junior worker with a freshly minted MBA named Lynne Greenfeld acquired the task to develop the model — she got here up with the Flamin’ Scorching title and shepherded the road into existence.

Montañez did dwell out a much less Hollywood model of his story, ascending from a plant employee to a director targeted on advertising and marketing. He additionally pitched new product initiatives, which can have modified the trail of his profession.

However Montañez started taking public credit score for inventing Flamin’ Hots within the late 2000s, practically twenty years after they had been invented. First, he talked about it in speeches at native enterprise and philanthropy award ceremonies. Then the net media, hungry for a feel-good story, took his claims viral.

And no one at Frito-Lay stopped him. A lot of the authentic Flamin’ Scorching crew had retired by the 2000s, however the few who remained let the story unfold unchecked.

Greenfeld contacted Frito-Lay in 2018 after first seeing that Montañez was taking credit score for Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos, triggering an organization investigation. That course of unearthed proof calling his account into query and led the corporate to the conclusion it shared with The Instances: “We worth Richard’s many contributions to our firm, particularly his insights into Hispanic shoppers, however we don’t credit score the creation of Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos or any Flamin’ Scorching merchandise to him.”

The producers of his biopic, regardless of being knowledgeable of issues by Frito-Lay in 2019, introduced a forged for the film in early Might.

The producers of the movie and the writer of Montañez’s newest ebook didn’t reply to requests for remark earlier than publication of this text.

Scorching stuff out there

The core of Montañez’s story rested on the pitch assembly that he says modified his life, the place he bought his concept of Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos on to the Frito-Lay elite. In his new memoir, he lays out a dramatic scene, with greater than 100 individuals, most of them “main executives,” assembled alongside the CEO in a convention room on the Rancho Cucamonga complicated to witness his presentation.

The Instances spoke with 20 individuals who labored on the Frito-Lay divisions chargeable for new product growth 32 years in the past, when Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos had been first extruded into existence. None remembers something just like the episode Montañez describes going down.

“If that story existed, imagine me, we might have heard about it,” mentioned Ken Lukaska, who labored as a product supervisor for the core Cheetos model when Flamin’ Hots had been rolling out nationally. “This man ought to run for workplace if he’s that good at fooling everybody.”

The concept grew into Flamin’ Hots didn’t come from Rancho Cucamonga, or California, and even Frito-Lay’s residence base in Texas.

Six of the previous staff bear in mind inspiration coming from the nook shops of Chicago and Detroit. One of many earliest newspaper articles in regards to the product corroborates that element: A Frito-Lay spokesperson advised the Dallas Morning Information in March 1992 that “our gross sales group within the northern United States requested for them.”

Fred Lindsay, a retired Frito-Lay salesman from the South Facet of Chicago, feels that he could be extra particular: “I’m the one which was chargeable for getting us into Flamin’ Scorching merchandise.”

The late ’80s had been a cutthroat time in company foodstuffs, and PepsiCo Inc., Frito-Lay’s mum or dad firm, was preventing a advertising and marketing warfare on three fronts. In its restaurant division, Pizza Hut was clawing its means into supply to fend off Domino’s, and Taco Bell resorted to free soda refills to undercut the competitors.

Pepsi’s beverage enterprise was locked within the decadelong Cola Conflict, with its flashy CEO, Roger Enrico, pouring hundreds of thousands into advert offers with Michael Jackson and Madonna to peel individuals away from King Coke.

Frito-Lay’s battle was quieter however simply as brutal. The corporate had been the reigning champ of salty snacks for many years, ever since Frito Co. and H.W. Lay & Co. had first merged, however Anheuser-Busch had come out swinging with its nationwide Eagle Snacks line, and Frito-Lay was shedding floor.

Lindsay for years labored the gross sales beat in Chicago and the Nice Lakes area, the place he witnessed spicy merchandise from regional rivals “simply blow off the shelf” at nook shops and gasoline stations. So he began beating the drum for the advertising and marketing division to gin up one thing. “I used to be preventing mad to try to get sizzling stuff out there,” Lindsay mentioned.

By the point he acquired promoted to company headquarters in Plano, working for the united statesbusiness — shorthand for “up and down the road,” which means any liquor retailer, sundry store or mini-mart smaller than a grocery retailer — his concept had been taken up by the advertising and marketing division.

“The humorous factor is, I heard possibly a yr in the past that some man from California was taking credit score for growing sizzling Cheetos, which is loopy,” Lindsay mentioned. “I’m not attempting to take credit score; I’m simply attempting to set the file straight.”

The task to create spicy competitor merchandise landed within the inbox of Sharon Owens, a product supervisor within the Single Serve group on the time. In contrast to the mainline manufacturers — Fritos, Doritos, Cheetos and Lays — whose managers had been anticipated to function custodians of only one product, Single Serve was organized round a format: individually wrapped merchandise made for cramped mini-marts and clients with just some quarters to spend.

Owens remembers that she assigned the undertaking to a brand new worker: Greenfeld.

Flamin’ Scorching was Greenfeld’s first undertaking on the firm when she began in the summertime of 1989, recent out of the MBA program on the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Enterprise levels had been virtually required to get within the door at PepsiCo in these days, with uncommon exceptions made for individuals with B.A.s from Babson Faculty, Enrico’s alma mater.

Miguel Lecuona, an MBA classmate of Greenfeld’s, joined the Single Serve crew on the identical time, engaged on beef sticks, candy snacks and different odd merchandise that will sit by a mini-mart register. “I used to be on the cookie,” Lecuona mentioned, “and Lynne Greenfeld was on the small-bag enterprise.”

“We’d go on a subject advertising and marketing tour and convey residence 50 totally different luggage of chips that we had by no means seen in our lives — they’d say we’re shedding gross sales to this sort of product line proper now,” Lecuona mentioned, “and so Flamin’ Scorching was truly, you can name it a taste concept.”

Over the subsequent few months, Greenfeld went on market excursions of small shops in Chicago, Detroit and Houston to get a greater really feel for what shoppers craved. She labored with Frito-Lay’s packaging and product design groups to provide you with the precise taste combine and branding for the luggage. She went with a chubby satan holding, a Cheeto, Frito or chip on a pitchfork, relying on the bag’s contents, she remembers, a reminiscence independently corroborated by newspaper archives.

By the summer time of 1990, the product entered its take a look at market. Frito-Lay’s trademark for the Flamin’ Scorching title lists that August because the month the product made its debut.

A trio of Flamin’ Scorching snacks — Fritos, Cheetos and Lays — hit small shops in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Houston, based on the Dallas Morning Information article and newspaper adverts for the brand new merchandise in these areas.

Frito-Lay corroborated lots of the particulars of this account, writing that “as early as 1989, there have been regional aggressive spicy merchandise in the marketplace,” together with a spicy, bright-red potato chip from the Chicago snack firm Jays.

“In response, Frito-Lay launched a take a look at market of spicy Lay’s, Cheetos, Fritos and Bakenets in Chicago, Detroit and Houston” starting in August 1990, the corporate wrote in a press release.

Frito-Lay wrote that “a product or taste extension is the work of various individuals throughout capabilities as various as R&D, gross sales and advertising and marketing, all of whom are happy with the merchandise they assist create.”

An inner promotional video for the Cheetos model from the primary quarter of 1991 serves as additional proof that Flamin’ Hots had been already out on the earth.

The practically nine-minute video, which Lukaska shared with The Instances, is a Day-Glo green-and-pink time capsule, with Frito-Lay execs in fashionably saggy fits touting the newest and best snack aimed toward children, Cheetos Paws. At one level, two DDB Needham promoting executives carry out a “New Jack Metropolis”-era rap in regards to the coolness of Chester himself. Flamin’ Hots seem within the video for lower than a second, in a rapid-fire slideshow set to MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Contact This,” alongside two different minor manufacturers of the day, Cheetos Curls and Cheetos Mild.

The take a look at markets quickly proved that Lindsay’s perception was proper, and Greenfeld’s execution labored. Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos and Lays rolled out throughout the nation by early 1992 and would slowly develop to grow to be a cult hit.

Greenfeld, who now goes by her married title, Lemmel, mentioned she’s “very proud” of main the crew that put Flamin’ Hots into the world, and for developing with the Flamin’ Scorching model title.

“It’s disappointing that 20 years later, somebody who performed no position on this undertaking would start to assert our expertise as his personal after which personally revenue from it,” she added.

‘Act like homeowners’

Montañez didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark by way of e mail, telephone, direct message, makes an attempt to achieve him by way of a publicity agent, and questions delivered to a member of the family at a house listed in Montañez’s title.

Hours after preliminary publication of this story, Montañez posted a video to his Instagram account, addressed to “all you younger leaders.”

“I don’t care what room you’re in, there’s all the time anyone within the room that’s going to attempt to steal your future. They might even say you by no means existed,” Montañez says to the digicam. “I would like you to do that: Write down your historical past, as a result of in case you don’t, anyone else will. Keep in mind that. And in addition bear in mind this, one of the simplest ways to destroy a optimistic message is to destroy the messenger. By no means enable that to occur to you. I’m definitely not going to permit it to occur to me.”

The file of Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos first coming into the market in 1990 factors to an impossibility on the coronary heart of Montañez’s story all alongside.

In telling after telling, Montañez says he felt empowered to invent Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos after watching a motivational video from Enrico, the CEO of the corporate, that inspired all Frito-Lay employees to “act like homeowners” and take cost of the enterprise.

And time after time, he says that Enrico was the CEO whom he boldly referred to as to pitch his concept and that Enrico flew out to Rancho Cucamonga weeks later to witness his pitch in individual. In his new memoir, Montañez clearly restates this declare: Enrico’s title seems 60 instances within the textual content.

However Enrico didn’t work at Frito-Lay when Flamin’ Scorching merchandise had been developed. His transfer to Frito-Lay was introduced in December 1990, and he took over management firstly of 1991 — practically six months after Flamin’ Hots had been already out within the take a look at market.

When the Flamin’ Scorching line first entered take a look at markets in the summertime of 1990, Robert Beeby was main Frito-Lay. Wayne Calloway was working the mum or dad firm, PepsiCo. Enrico was the president and CEO of PepsiCo Worldwide Drinks, the separate tender drink division of PepsiCo, main the corporate within the Cola Wars.

Enrico went on to steer PepsiCo as an entire by the top of the ’90s, and the primary media point out of his “I Personal the New Frito-Lay” marketing campaign got here in a Might 1992 characteristic in Advert Day. He retired in 2001, and he died whereas snorkeling within the Cayman Islands in 2016. The Instances discovered no public feedback from him on Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos or any Flamin’ Scorching product.

Patti Rueff, who labored as Enrico’s secretary for many years as he moved from the beverage enterprise to Frito-Lay and on to the highest of the mum or dad firm, vividly remembers Montañez calling her workplace to talk with Enrico — as soon as he was already main Frito-Lay, in 1992 or 1993, and after Flamin’ Scorching merchandise had been already on cabinets.

One different Frito-Lay govt performed a key position in Montañez’s Flamin’ Scorching story: Al Carey, a Frito-Lay lifer who labored on the firm for practically 40 years, rising by way of the manager suite to the highest of the company pyramid.

Carey seems to be the one Frito-Lay govt who labored on the firm on the time of Flamin’ Scorching growth to publicly endorse Montañez’s model of occasions through the years.

In 1990 Carey was working as vice chairman of nationwide gross sales out of the Plano workplaces. When Enrico got here in, he promoted Carey to supervise a brand new merchandising machine and warehouse division in early 1992, after which to division president of Frito-Lay West, based mostly within the Bay Space, on the finish of that yr.

Carey turned president and CEO of Frito-Lay North America in 2006. In 2007, Montañez started telling his story in public, and the pair have made joint appearances at various public occasions over the course of their careers.

Montañez writes in his new memoir that he met Carey within the late Eighties, when the exec was taking a tour of the Cucamonga plant. When Montañez later referred to as him for recommendation on pitching his concept for spicy Cheetos, he says, Carey inspired him to name Enrico straight.

In an interview, Carey, 69, initially mentioned that he first met Montañez after turning into division president for Frito-Lay West in December 1992, and that Montañez pitched him a set of merchandise focused on the Latino market. When requested how that timeline matches with the 1990 Flamin’ Scorching trademark and take a look at market, Carey insisted that Montañez is the creator of Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos.

“The product that we all know immediately as Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos was positively not out out there” earlier than his assembly with Montañez, Carey mentioned. “That product was developed by these guys within the plant.”

When requested to elucidate the information clippings and former worker accounts that place Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos out there two years earlier, Carey hedged his assertion. “That is such a very long time in the past, I guess there was a spicy Cheeto within the Chicago, L.A., possibly Houston market, too,” Carey mentioned.

“Of all of the people who find themselves in PepsiCo or round PepsiCo, I’ve essentially the most expertise,” he continued. “I can promise you for positive there was no model growth, no model launched referred to as Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos,” Carey mentioned, including that if there was a previous spicy product in the marketplace, it was reformulated to match Montañez’s pattern product. “The components, that’s the magic of the product,” Carey mentioned.

Frito-Lay’s assertion contradicted its former CEO. “Based on our data, McCormick, Frito-Lay’s longtime seasoning provider, developed the Flamin’ Scorching seasoning and despatched preliminary samples to Frito-Lay on Dec. 15, 1989,” the assertion mentioned. “That is basically the identical seasoning Frito-Lay makes use of immediately.”

Carey mentioned he was uncertain methods to account for that contradiction. “I’m positive in case you went again into the Frito-Lay historical past, OK, there’s most likely one thing in 1990 that was a take a look at market on a spicy product,” he mentioned. “I’ll be shocked if it was this identical ingredient, however it might have been, I suppose.”

When requested in regards to the pitch assembly central to Montañez’s account, Carey mentioned that Enrico was not in attendance.

“In fact tales develop, and the longer we get away from the date the tales evolve,” Carey mentioned. “I’ll guess Richard’s added just a little taste to it.”

He mentioned that he “recommended strongly” that Montañez retire when he did, in 2019, if he needed to pursue his profession as a motivational speaker, memoirist and movie topic.

“You’re theoretically not speculated to be giving a speech and being paid for it in case you’re nonetheless part of the corporate,” Carey mentioned. “I mentioned this can be a enjoyable story; this shouldn’t be a controversial story; your inclination to dramatize the story just a little bit, you’ve acquired to steer clear of that.”

However he repeated that Montañez was key to Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos’ success. A lot of merchandise have grown into hits, he mentioned, solely after a charismatic chief comes alongside. “They might haven’t invented the ingredient, however they invented the vitality that goes behind this factor and the positioning, after which it turns into profitable,” he mentioned.

“With out Richard, this factor wouldn’t be on the market,” he concluded.

Kernel of reality

Beneath Montañez’s story about Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos, seen by way of its inconsistencies and supported by the documented timeline of occasions, there’s a actual story of a person rising up the company ladder, from manufacturing facility flooring to advertising and marketing govt, pitching some merchandise alongside the best way.

Montañez was born in Ontario to a Mexican American household that lived within the unincorporated neighborhood of Guasti, a cluster of buildings and outlets centered on vineyards east of Los Angeles, the place among the males in his household picked grapes for a residing.

He dropped out of faculty — however not, as he has claimed in previous media appearances, after the fourth grade, or, as he claims in his new memoir, earlier than the sixth. Montañez seems to have made it to at the least the ninth grade — he’s listed within the freshman class part of the Chaffey Excessive yearbook of 1972 however disappears from the world’s yearbooks after that.

Montañez acquired a job on the Frito-Lay plant in Rancho Cucamonga within the late Nineteen Seventies. Though Montañez has at instances mentioned he was working as a janitor when he pitched Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos, Frito-Lay mentioned its data present he was promoted to machinist operator by October 1977, shortly after his hiring. In that position, he writes in his new memoir, he spearheaded a program to cut back waste alongside the meeting line.

After Enrico moved to Frito-Lay and the motivational “I Personal the New Frito-Lay” marketing campaign rippled throughout the corporate, a single information clipping that includes Montañez offers a window into that second in his profession.

The U.S. Information and World Report article from December 1993 focuses on companies discovering success by empowering their staff. The part on Frito-Lay talks in regards to the plant in Rancho Cucamonga, the place supervisor Steve Smith had taken up Enrico’s initiative and gotten extra front-line employees serious about methods to enhance the enterprise as an entire.

“Veteran machine operator Richard Montañez, 37, turned so energized by Smith’s new working type that after listening to salesmen he developed a brand new ethnic-food idea aimed on the Hispanic market,” the reporter writes. “After testing recipes and outlining a advertising and marketing technique, Montañez burst forth with a kernel of an concept: Flamin’ Scorching Popcorn, which can quickly make its debut.”

An trade information wire introduced that Flamin’ Scorching Popcorn did the truth is hit cabinets in March 1994, as an extension of the Flamin’ Scorching line that Greenfeld and her colleagues had rolled out 4 years earlier.

Round that point, Montañez started engaged on a line of merchandise pitched particularly on the Latino market within the Los Angeles space: Sabrositas. Photos that Montañez has posted to his Instagram account present that the Sabrositas line included Flamin’ Scorching Popcorn, two forms of Fritos — Flamin’ Scorching and Lime and Chile Corn Chips — and a Doritos selection billed as buñuelito-style tortilla chips.

Roberto Siewczynski labored on the Sabrositas take a look at market in 1994 as an outdoor marketing consultant for Casanova, a Latino-focused wing of the advert company McCann, and remembers Montañez being deeply concerned within the course of.

Siewczynski’s recollection of the Sabrositas advertising and marketing marketing campaign aligns with what Montañez describes in his memoir — although Montañez attaches his story to Flamin’ Scorching merchandise, not the Sabrositas launch.

“I did go to Rancho Cucamonga,” Siewczynski mentioned, the place he was shocked to study that the Sabrositas undertaking was being led by manufacturing and distribution employees, not the advertising and marketing division, as a community-driven marketing campaign targeted on the Latino market in Los Angeles. “It was, ‘Hey, the plant actually needs to do that; Richard actually needs to do that,’ and so they reduce out plenty of the normal administration.”

He remembers Montañez as a colourful, partaking storyteller, nicely appreciated by all of his co-workers on the plant. And he remembers a creation story, however one which targeted on Lime and Chile Fritos, not Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos.

Montañez “advised the entire story about how when he was a child he would put lime and chile on his Fritos, and that was kind of the impetus for the product design,” Siewczynski mentioned.

In his new memoir, Montañez writes that he tapped into the native community of ladies internet hosting Tupperware events to get Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos out to clients in Southern California as a technique to bolster the struggling take a look at market.

Siewczynski remembers the identical story — for Sabrositas. “The product was rolled out with none mass media or promoting,” he mentioned. “We did a strategic partnership with Tupperware, the place they’d take the product to their events,” he added, recalling a mortifying presentation that he made as a 22-year-old advert man to a room of a whole lot of Tupperware women, who ribbed him onstage for being so younger and good-looking.

Frito-Lay data shared with The Instances present that Montañez was promoted to a quality-control tech companies specialist from 1998 to 2002, then left the plant and rose to a director-level place. He acquired various accolades from each neighborhood teams and PepsiCo CEOs alongside the best way.

He’s now retired in his early 60s, after a full profession climbing the company ladder. Montañez made it, from rags to riches, from manufacturing facility flooring to company suite. He simply didn’t make Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos.

The investigation

Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos turned a cultural phenomenon within the 2000s. As early as 2005, college directors thought-about banning them within the classroom due to their distracting recognition with college students; Pasadena faculties eventually prohibited them in 2012. Their first meme second got here in that very same yr, in a 2012 viral rap video, “Hot Cheetos and Takis,” a tune written and carried out by a bunch of youngsters as a part of an after-school program in north Minneapolis. The years since have seen pop-up eating places and style traces, and numerous Instagram-ready Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos menu objects at eating places throughout the nation.

Montañez’s story of the janitor who had invented Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos picked up traction, serving as fodder for weblog posts and on-line movies. Montañez’s personal Instagram account amassed tens of hundreds of followers, and his TikTok following now tops 100,000.

However the individuals who had labored on the unique Flamin’ Scorching line weren’t watching viral movies or studying meals blogs focused at younger audiences. Most of them had already left the corporate by the early 2000s. Most had already retired.

Greenfeld, the Flamin’ Scorching crew chief, didn’t see the story of the scrappy janitor who invented Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos till the summer time of 2018, when she occurred upon a blog post on the Esquire website.

Greenfeld was shocked to see somebody taking credit score for a product that she had labored on. She reached out to an acquaintance who was nonetheless working at Frito-Lay, based on emails considered by The Instances, asking if that they had ever heard of the Montañez story, and in the event that they knew anybody she might alert within the authorized division that somebody was claiming to have invented Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos.

Michele Thatcher, chief counsel in PepsiCo’s international human sources division, wrote that she and the authorized crew “know Richard nicely,” had been conscious of his ebook and film initiatives, and had been uncertain what drawback, if any, there is perhaps along with his story. Over the a long time, the institutional reminiscence had been misplaced.

Additional e mail correspondence exhibits that the corporate launched an investigation into the query of Flamin’ Scorching’s origin after Greenfeld’s preliminary e mail.

In a December 2018 message, Leanne Oliver, common counsel at Frito-Lay North America, wrote that she didn’t assume there was “any query” that the Flamin’ Scorching take a look at market predated “the Cucamonga assembly” the place Montañez pitched some form of product.

In a later e mail, one other Frito-Lay lawyer, Susan Chao, wrote, “We all know you and the Legislation Dept labored collectively to trademark ‘Flamin’ Scorching’” however requested Greenfeld if she remembered who had invented the title. “I got here up with the Flamin’ Scorching title by myself,” Greenfeld replied.

The investigation quickly got here to an efficient useless finish. Montañez retired in March 2019. Carey, his company mentor, retired that very same month.

The subsequent month, Oliver wrote in an e mail that “Frito-Lay will proceed to take the place that Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos was created by a crew of individuals and, as with all of our merchandise, we don’t credit score one individual with a product invention or taste extension.”

Carey and Montañez appeared collectively quickly after, at a June 2019 ceremony the place Carey accepted a lifetime achievement award from the East Los Angeles Group Union. In a video created for the occasion, Montañez shifts his story, saying that it was Carey, and never Enrico, who created the motivational video that impressed him to create Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos within the first place, although he has since returned to his model of the story that includes Enrico.

Carey at present sits on the board of the Residence Depot, serves as govt chairman of the North Carolina textiles firm Unifi and is on the board of a blank-check automobile, Omnichannel Acquisition Corp.

Indra Nooyi, who was chairman and CEO of PepsiCo whereas Carey was working Frito-Lay and the Pepsi beverage enterprise, has blurbed Montañez’s new memoir, calling it a “tour de drive.” (Nooyi additionally retired in 2019.) Tom Greco, who took over at Frito-Lay as soon as Carey moved to Pepsi, has additionally blurbed the ebook. Nooyi joined PepsiCo in 1994, and Greco labored in Frito-Lay’s Canadian division till the early 2000s.

Montañez has spent a lot of his time since retirement working the speaker circuit, based on his social media accounts, delivering keynotes at in-person and digital occasions for organizations corresponding to Prudential Monetary, the Philadelphia Eagles, recruitment tech firm Certainly, name middle expertise firm Genesys, and at Pestworld 2019, the annual convention of the Nationwide Pest Administration Assn.

After the investigation and his retirement, Montañez has additionally repeatedly posted to his social media accounts images of what he claims are authentic design supplies for Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos. Many have just lately been deleted.

One {photograph}, posted to Instagram in October 2019 however now deleted, exhibits 4 items of lined pocket book paper, labeled “gentle,” “reg,” “sizzling” and “further sizzling,” with Cheetos piled on prime of every. On the backside of 1, Montañez signed his title and wrote the date “1988.”

In one other submit, now deleted, he wrote that he labored on the Doritos Salsa Rio taste in 1998 — a product that first hit take a look at markets in 1987, based on Promoting Age articles from that yr.

In public statements since conducting its inner investigation, Frito-Lay has struck a cautious tone.

In an August 2019 interview with Fast Company about Montañez’s biopic, Frito-Lay Chief Advertising and marketing Officer Jennifer Saenz mentioned that the corporate helped the movie’s producers piece collectively the historic info that exists on Flamin’ Scorching Cheetos.

Saenz then considerably repeated the assertion that the corporate had despatched to Lynne some months earlier: “At Frito-Lay, and PepsiCo, a product or taste extension is the work of various individuals throughout capabilities as various as R&D, gross sales and advertising and marketing, all of whom are happy with the merchandise they assist create.”

In April 2020, a brand new chief advertising and marketing officer, Rachel Ferdinando, seems in a CNBC video characteristic about Flamin’ Scorching merchandise. She stops in need of calling Montañez the inventor of the product.

However she does title Montañez, saying that “Richard’s insights into the Hispanic shopper actually helped us form and take into consideration how we should always speak to that shopper,” including that his pondering perception “was one thing we relied on very closely.”

The filmmakers behind Montañez’s biopic had been knowledgeable of potential issues along with his story two years in the past. In April 2019, Frito-Lay’s authorized crew forwarded a letter that Greenfeld wrote outlining her model of occasions to Franklin, whose manufacturing firm, Franklin Leisure, is co-producing Montañez’s biopic together with Searchlight Photos.

It’s unclear whether or not the producers ever knowledgeable Longoria, who’s set to direct the movie. And like many Hollywood initiatives, the film might use Montañez’s story as a jumping-off level for a fictional story.

In early Might, Longoria introduced that she had chosen the actors to play Montañez and his spouse, and that the movie would start taking pictures this summer time in New Mexico.

She advised Variety that it has been her “largest precedence to verify we’re telling Richard Montañez’s story authentically.”