How to Draw a Bag of Hot Cheetos TUTORIAL
STORY UPDATE:
On May 16, 2021, The Los Angeles Times published a year-long investigation into the validity of Richard Montañez'southward story and found major discrepancies in the narrative he has told many media outlets over the by decade.
According to the paper's study — which was based on an internal investigation at Frito-Lay — Montañez wasn't direct involved with the cosmos of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. Though he did ascend from janitor to executive, the paper purports that the snack was ideated and launched in the late 1980s by a team of corporate "hotshot snack professionals" within Frito-Lay, including a woman named Lynne Greenfeld. ( The Hustle has non had time to independently verify these claims.)
For more than 10 years, Montañez's story garnered big publicity from outlets like The Washington Post, NPR, and CNBC. He gave motivational speeches around the country and published books chronicling his invention. A Hollywood biopic on his life story, directed by Eva Longoria, is set to begin filming afterward this year.
All the while, Frito-Lay never publically corrected the tape. (The company did not respond to our request to annotate on the story when we published it in 2017.) The company told the LAT that it wasn't aware of whatsoever bug with Montañez'south origin story until recently; now, quondam Frito-Lay employees are alleging that Montañez has taken credit for contributions he had nothing to do with.
Montañez has not responded to our asking for comment. But on his personal Facebook folio, he seems to be denying the claims against him.
"In that location'south always someone in the room who's going to try to steal your destiny," he said in a video titled "Write your own history" posted on Sun. "They may even say y'all never existed." He has also shared posts from supporters insinuating that Frito-Lay is trying to erase the historical contributions of Mexican-American inventors.
Nosotros believe in full transparency, so instead of deleting this post, nosotros're going to leave it unedited in total below.
Nosotros'll go along to update this note equally more than information comes in.
***
ORIGINAL STORY:
On an early on morning in the tardily 1980s, a group of the highest-powered executives at Frito-Lay — the CEO, CMO, and a platoon of VPs — gathered in a California conference room to hear what Richard Montañez had to say.
Montañez didn't share their pedigree. He wasn't an executive. He had no fancy caste. He had a 4th-grade-level education, and couldn't read or write.
Montañez was a janitor. Just he was a janitor with an thought — an idea that would make the company billions of dollars and become one of history's well-nigh celebrated and iconic snack foods: Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
But starting time, he had to convince the world to hear him out.
Picking grapes
Montañez grew up in the 1960s in Guasti, California, a tiny unincorporated farming town forty miles e of Los Angeles.
Nether the sweltering Cucamonga Valley sunday, his family unit — mother, father, grandfather, and xi children — scraped together a meager living picking grapes, and slept together in a one-room cinderblock domicile at the labor camp.
As a first-generation Mexican immigrant at an all-white schoolhouse, Montañez had access to few resources and struggled to empathise his teachers. "I call back my mom getting me ready for schoolhouse and I was crying," he later on told Lowrider magazine. "I couldn't speak English."
Ane day in course, the teacher went effectually the room asking each kid to proper noun his or her dream job: Doc… astronaut… veterinarian. When she called on Montañez, he froze.
"I realized I didn't have a dream," he says. "There was no dream where I came from."
Montañez soon stopped getting on the school bus and began boarding the work truck with his male parent and grandpa.
After dropping out of school , he worked the fields in 110 °F heat and took on odd jobs slaughtering chickens at a poultry factory, washing cars, and picking weeds. With a quaternary-grade-level educational activity and few economic opportunities, Montañez saw no path out of poverty.
Then, in 1976, a neighbor told him about a job opening that would modify his life.
"There's no such thing as 'just a janitor'"
Downward the road, in Rancho Cucamonga, the Frito-Lay plant was looking for a janitor.
At $4 per 60 minutes ($xviii in 2019 dollars), the job paid many multiples of what Montañez fabricated in the fields. It represented a better life — insurance, benefits, social mobility.
Unable to read or write, the 18-year-old recruited his wife to help fill out an application. He journeyed downward a dusty route, met with the hiring manager, and got the job.
When he broke the news to his family, his grandfather imparted a piece of advice that would always stick with him: "Brand sure that flooring shines," the man told his grandson. "And let them know that a Montañez mopped it."
Montañez decided he was going to exist the "best janitor Frito-Lay had ever seen" — and he quickly made his presence known.
"Every time someone walked into a room, information technology would aroma fresh," he says. "I realized there'southward no such affair as 'only a janitor' when you believe you lot're going to exist the best."
Montañez too developed the philosophy that "it'south not almost who yous know — information technology's most who knows you ."
In between shifts, he prepare out to make himself seen, learning as much as he could nearly the company'southward products, spending time in the warehouse, and watching the machines churn out crunchy snacks in the lonely midnight hours.
And eventually, his insatiable curiosity would pay off.
"I saw no products catering to Latinos"
Past the mid-1980s, Frito-Lay had fallen on tough times. Every bit a way to heave morale, and so-CEO Roger Enrico recorded a video message and disseminated information technology to the company's 300k employees.
In the video, Enrico encouraged every worker at the company to "act like an owner." Most employees brushed it off every bit a management platitude; Montañez took it to heart.
"Here'south my invitation… hither'due south the CEO telling me, the janitor, that I tin act like an owner," he later recalled . "I didn't know what I was going to do. Didn't need to. But I knew I was going to human activity like an owner."
After nearly a decade mopping floors, Montañez gathered the courage to ask i of the Frito-Lay salesmen if he could tag along and learn more than about the process.
They went to a convenience shop in a Latino neighborhood — and while the salesman restocked inventory, Montañez made a fortuitous observation: "I saw our products on the shelves and they were all evidently: Lay'due south, Fritos, Ruffles," he recalls. "And right next to these chips happened to be a shelf of Mexican spices."
In that moment, he realized that Frito-Lay had "cypher spicy or hot."
A few weeks later, Montañez stopped at a local vendor to go some elote , a Mexican "street corn" doused in chili pulverization, common salt, cotija, lime juice, and crema fresca. Cob in manus, a "revelation" struck: What if I put chili on a Cheeto?
Introduced to the world in 1948, Cheetos — crunchy corn-based nuggets coated in cheese-flavored pulverisation — were a flagship product of Frito-Lay. And while they were pop amidst California's growing base of Latino consumers, the company had yet to consider re-tailoring the product's sense of taste profile.
"Nobody had given any thought to the Latino market place," recalls Montañez. "But everywhere I looked, I saw information technology ready to explode."
So, Montañez heeded the CEO's words and "acted similar an owner."
Working belatedly one night at the product facility, he scooped up some Cheetos that hadn't notwithstanding been dusted in cheese. He took them dwelling house and, with the help of his wife, covered them in his own concoction of chili powder and other "secret" spices.
When he handed them out to family members and friends, the snacks were met with universal enthusiasm. He but needed a bigger audition…
So he called the CEO
"I was naive," Montañez later said . "I didn't know you weren't supposed to telephone call the CEO… I didn't know the rules."
Finding Roger Enrico's phone number was piece of cake enough: Information technology was listed in a company directory. He rang the line, and was put through to the chief's executive assistant.
"Mr. Enrico's office. Who is this?"
"Richard Montañez."
"What division are you with?"
"California."
"You're the VP overseeing California?"
"No, I work at the Rancho Cucamonga plant."
"Oh, so you lot're the VP of operations?"
"No, I work inside the plant."
"You lot're the plant director?"
"No. I'm the janitor."
The assistant paused for what seemed like an eternity. "One moment."
Then, a voice on the other line: "Hullo, this is Roger."
Montañez told the CEO he'd heeded the call to action. He'd studied the company'southward products, identified a demand in the marketplace, and even crafted his own rudimentary snacks in his kitchen.
Enrico loved the ingenuity: He told the janitor he'd be at the institute in 2 weeks and asked him to gear up a presentation.
Moments after Montañez hung upward the phone, the plant manager stormed upwardly to him. "He said, 'Who do you think you are? Who let the janitor call the CEO?'" recalls Montañez. "Then he said, 'Yous'RE doing this presentation!'"
The birth of the Hot Cheeto
Montañez was 26 years one-time. In his words, he couldn't read or write very well and had no knowledge nigh how to formulate a business proposal.
Simply he wasn't about to give up.
Accompanied past his wife, he went to the library, institute a book on marketing strategies, and copied the get-go 5 paragraphs word for word onto transparencies . At dwelling house, he filled 100 plastic baggies with his homemade treats, sealed them with a clothing iron, and manually drew a logo and blueprint on each package.
On the mean solar day of the presentation, he bought a $3 necktie — blackness with bluish and red stripes — and had his neighbour knot it for him. As he gathered the bags, his wife stopped him near the door: "Don't forget who you are."
Montañez stepped into the boardroom. "Here I was," he says, "a janitor presenting to some of the nearly highly qualified executives in America."
At ane point during the presentation, an executive in the room interjected: "How much market share exercise you think you can get?"
"It hitting me that I had no thought what he was talking most, or what I was doing," Montañez recalled . "I was shaking, and I damn nearly wanted to pass out…[but] I opened my arms and I said, 'This much market share!' I didn't even know how ridiculous that looked."
The room went silent as the CEO stood upward and smiled. "Ladies and gentlemen, practice you realize we take an opportunity to go after this much market share?" he said, stretching out his artillery.
He turned to Montañez. "Put that mop away, y'all're coming with us."
Feeling hot, hot, hot
6 months later, with Montañez's assistance, Frito-Lay began testing Flamin' Hot Cheetos in small-scale Latino markets in Eastward Los Angeles.
If it performed well, the company would move forward with the production; if information technology didn't, they'd scratch it — and Montañez would probable render to janitorial duties. This was his ane shot, and some folks didn't want things to work out for him.
"It seemed in that location was a group of [executives] who wanted information technology to fail," he after told the podcast, The Passionate Few . "They thought I got lucky. They were paid big bucks to come up with these ideas… they didn't want some janitor to practice it."
So Montañez assembled a small team of family members and friends, went to the test markets, and bought every bag of Hot Cheetos he could discover.
"I'd tell the owner, 'Homo, these are great,'" he recalled . "Next week, I'd come back and there'd be a whole rack."
In 1992, Flamin' Hot Cheetos were greenlit for a national release. And in short social club, the snack became one of the most successful product launches in Frito-Lay history.
From janitor to VP
Today, Flamin' Hot Cheetos are one of Frito-Lay'due south hottest-selling commodities — a multi-billion-dollar snack historic by anybody from Katy Perry to heart-schoolers on meal vouchers. There'due south even a rap song well-nigh them.
And Montañez is no longer sweeping floors: Over a 35-year career, the former janitor rose through the corporate ranks and is now the vice president of multicultural sales for PepsiCo America (the holding company of Frito-Lay).
Frito-Lay did not reply to The Hustle's request to annotate on Montañez's impact. Before Montañez joined the executive team, Frito-Lay had only 3 Cheeto products; since and so, the company has launched more than than 20 , each worth $300m+.
Recognized past Newsweek and Fortune as one of the almost influential Hispanic leaders in America, Montañez is a gifted speaker who often tours the country giving keynotes . And before long, his story will hit the silver screen: Play a joke on Searchlight Pictures is currently working on a biopic nearly his life, appropriately titled "Flamin' Hot."
He still lives in Rancho Cucamonga, where he gives back to his community through a nonprofit he launched and teaches MBA classes at a nearby college.
Recently, a student asked him how he was teaching without a Ph.D.
"I practice accept a Ph.D.," he responded. "I've been poor, hungry and determined."
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How to Draw a Bag of Hot Cheetos TUTORIAL
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