Ever devoured a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and wanted to shake the hand of the person who came up with the idea? Well, we can't arrange that, but you can now find out more about the man behind the bright orange puffs. Flamin' Hot, the true rags-to-riches story of Richard Montañez, the creator of Flamin' Hot Cheetos, is coming to Disney+ and Hulu on 9 June. The movie is the directorial debut of actor Eva Longoria, and stars Jesse Garcia (pictured on set) in the lead role.
Based on Richard's memoir, A Boy, a Burrito and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive, the comedy-drama details how, after joining Frito-Lay as an entry-level janitor, he rose through the ranks to become one of the company's vice-presidents – creating a spicy version of Cheetos to appeal to the brand's Hispanic consumers along the way.
However, it's not just Cheetos that got the spicy treatment; Richard was also responsible for genius creations like Hot Fritos, Hot Doritos and Hot Funyuns. The 'godfather of Hispanic marketing' – as he's now been dubbed – Richard left Frito-Lay in 2019 to become a motivational speaker. With a backstory like that, who could fail to be inspired?
Flamin' Hot Cheetos aren't the only snacks with a fascinating backstory. Read on for more true tales of the brains behind your favourite brands:
Birds Eye fish fingers, Kikkoman soy sauce, OXO stock cubes and Smirnoff vodka – these are all well-known foods and drinks, but how much do you know about the people behind them? It turns out the men and women who invented these essentials have amazingly interesting life stories, from how they grew up to the many ventures they tried and failed at before stumbling onto the money. From serial entrepreneurs to a 17th-century samurai warrior’s widow, find out more about the brains behind the brands.
There’s more to Clarence Birdseye – the man widely credited as the inventor of frozen dinners – than bags of mixed veg and battered fish. The serial entrepreneur from Brooklyn, New York, was a science researcher and outdoor adventurer. He spent many years of his life in the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana working on a project about Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever – a bacterial disease spread through a bite from an infected tick. During this time he learned how to shoot and hunt animals.
As a natural businessman, his entrepreneurship developed at a young age. It’s said his first business deal was when he was just 10, selling muskrats caught in Long Island to an English lord who wanted to fill his estate with wild game. His part-time jobs while at university involved selling baby frogs to Bronx Zoo to feed its reptiles and trapping rare black rats in a local butcher's shop for a genetics professor. Later, he travelled to Labrador to work in the fur trading business.
When Birdseye entered the frozen food industry, the process for freezing food was slow and it was barely fit for consumption. During his travels in sub-zero Labrador in Canada, he noticed frozen food was better quality because it reached lower temperatures quicker. He was intrigued by the speed of the freeze and this is where his idea to design a fast-freezing refrigerating apparatus process, patented in 1930, came from. It revolutionised frozen food and allowed individual portions, such as burger patties and fish fingers, to be packaged.
In 1815, one of the most destructive volcano explosions in history occurred – Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted. From this, 1816 became "the year without a summer" – crops failed as far as the northern hemisphere and people starved. The event had an impact on 13-year-old Justus von Liebig, a young boy from Darmstadt, Germany, with an interest in chemistry. Driven by a desire to tackle world hunger, he became a university professor at the age of 21 and embarked on a career in nutrition research.
Mothers not being able to breastfeed used to be a huge issue and infant mortality rates were sky high. One of the projects Liebig worked on was creating an infant formula that would be nutritionally similar to breast milk. Launched in 1865, Liebig's Soluble Food for Babies was revolutionary – a powder comprising cow's milk, wheat flour, malt flour and potassium bicarbonate. It quickly spread beyond women who couldn’t breastfeed to also helping new mothers who needed to go back to work quickly.
Another ground-breaking product Liebig is responsible for is the OXO stock cube. Again, driven by a desire to improve public health, he worked out how to extract and concentrate the nutrition in beef. It was called OXO because these were the letters dockers scrawled on the crates of Liebig’s beef extract to distinguish it from corned beef. And 47 years after his death, the Liebig Extract of Meat Company bought a generating station in London and turned it into the OXO Tower – a tribute to the German scientist’s success.
In the 1600s, there weren’t many women entrepreneurs. However, the story of Shige Maki, the widow of a 17th-century samurai warrior, is an exceptional one. After the siege of Osaka Castle in Japan where she sadly lost her husband, Maki escaped to a village called Noda near Edo (known today as Tokyo) with her son. Here, she changed her family name to Mogi and took on the responsibility of making money for herself. She learned how to brew soy sauce, inadvertently starting the Kikkoman brand.
In the Edo period, when Japan was under the rule of the military government Tokugawa shogunate, family businesses were governed by creeds. As the Kikkoman soy sauce recipe was passed down through generations of Mogi parents and children, the family creed was their guide. The most famous saying – “make haste slowly” – shines through in everything the company does, from its six-month natural brewing process to its tortoise shell logo. Never turning its back on tradition, Kikkoman has progressed slowly and steadily.
Love fresh potato crisps? Then, Laura Scudder is who you must thank, as she was the first to put them in individual wax paper packages, which later became cellophane. Before her idea, crisps came in barrels and tins, so they were usually stale and crushed. Scudder was also one of the first to put freshness dates on food products. However, starting a company as a woman in 1926 was no easy feat and she went through a lot.
Back then, men had trouble trusting women in business and Scudder faced difficulty finding insurance for her food delivery trucks. However, she was good with money, often known for paying bills the day they came, and her perseverance paid dividends. She eventually expanded the business into peanut butter and mayonnaise, and controlled 50% of the California potato crisp market by the mid-1950s.
Besides her business acumen and strong will, Scudder had a multitude of other skills. She was a stylish woman, often photographed wearing wide-brimmed hats, gloves and a purse. She was a mother to four children and also a trained nurse and lawyer. In fact, even though she never practised law, she passed the bar and was the first female attorney in Ukiah, California.
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Starting life as a serf – an agricultural labourer bound to work on his lord's estate – Pyotr Smirnov overcame great odds in 19th-century Russia to set up his vodka empire. Despite not being able to read and write, he travelled to the country’s capital Moscow and learned how to produce spirits and market them into a viable business. Despite Russia’s extreme drinking culture he avoided falling prey to alcoholism, and despite having no social connections managed to get Russian royalty interested in his business.
At the time there was a great need for merchants seeking success to find fans in Russia's ruling class. At first Smirnov was rejected, but he worked hard and succeeded, becoming a purveyor to Alexander III’s court in 1886. The following decade his hard work was undone as his feuding family were unable to work together and they lost the business. The name Smirnov only became attached to high-quality vodka again after Second World War.
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Chaleo Yoovidhya is the opposite of the adrenaline-fuelled, thrill-seeking Red Bull brand he founded – most often described as "amenable", "hard-working" and "reclusive". In the 30 years before his death in 2012, Yoovidhya didn’t give a single interview to the media, but delve deeper and you'll find that the media-shy businessman has a fascinating life story.
Born in central Thailand to Chinese immigrant parents, Yoovidhya grew up poor and without much education. His early jobs included being a bus conductor and helping run his brother’s chemist shop in Bangkok selling antibiotics. Demonstrating that school isn’t everything, Yoovidhya learned along the way and in the early 1960s resigned from the chemist to set up his own company TC Pharmaceuticals. This is when he started working on creating high-caffeine energy drink Krating Daeng, which later became Red Bull.
Already recognised in Thailand, Yoovidhya’s international success began when he met Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz in the 1980s. Mateschitz suggested they carbonate Krating Daeng and introduce it globally, a deal which turned both men into billionaires. The duo dismissed traditional marketing in favour of daring PR stunts and parties where free samples were given out. This turned Krating Daeng, now known as Red Bull, into a global brand which sold nearly one can for each person on the earth in 2019.
Did you know Popsicle’s inventor was an 11-year-old child? In 1905, San Francisco Bay kid Frank Epperson left a cup of soda with its stirring stick in on the cold porch overnight, and when he returned the next morning it had frozen. Epperson called his invention "Epsicle" – because it looked like an icicle – and licked it off the wooden stirrer. He also got the grand idea to make and sell more ice pops in and around the neighbourhood.
Most people would have left the business venture there, but the entrepreneur decided to expand his market and sell his frozen Epsicles at nearby amusement park Neptune Beach. The treat was a hit. In 1923, motivated by his small success, Epperson applied for a patent for his frozen confection and after making it for his own kids he decided to rename the ice pop Popsicle.
Sadly, Epperson’s story didn’t end on a high. In the late 1920s, he was running low on funds and sold the rights to his creation to the Joe Lowe Co, a decision which he went on to regret. The company catapulted his invention to national success but when Epperson died in 1983 he was not a rich man. The ice pop was then bought by Unilever in 1989, expanding the line beyond its fruit flavours.
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You may not have heard of Margaret Rudkin – well at least not by her name – but you will be familiar with Goldfish crackers, and Milano and Chessman cookies, all sold by her company Pepperidge Farm. But where did she get the inspiration during a time when barely any women started businesses? Rudkin grew up in New York in the late 1890s in a second-generation Irish family. After she married Wall Street broker Henry Rudkin in 1923, she left the city for their new home Pepperidge Farm in Norwalk, Connecticut.
However, it wasn’t all happy days in the beginning. First there was the Wall Street Crash, then the Great Depression, but the biggest challenge was her youngest son Mark’s allergies which meant he was unable to eat processed food. Upset by his suffering, Rudkin tried putting him on a diet of predominantly fruit and veg. She also started baking her own whole wheat bread, which was very different to the white bread available in shops at the time.
Mark loved it and it improved his health immensely – so much so that his doctor began to prescribe Rudkin's bread to his other patients. Friends and family enjoyed it too, and she knew she was on to something. After approaching her local grocer, Pepperidge Farm products went on sale for the general population to buy. Sales were good, so Rudkin expanded the line with Milano and Goldfish – cookies inspired by what she’d seen on a recent trip to Europe.
Momofuku Ando is responsible for one of the most-loved foods in the world – Cup Noodles. However, he came from very humble beginnings. Born as Wu Baifu in Taiwan 1910, he lost his parents at a young age and was raised by his grandparents. His first ventures included textile trading, selling socks, salt production and running a school. His big break didn’t come until later in life.
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The 48-year-old Ando was living in post-war Japan – he emigrated in 1933 to study economics – and it was now the 1950s. The economy was in ruins and there were mass food shortages, which lead to queues outside noodle shops. He knew if he could come up with a noodle that could be prepared quickly then the problem would be solved. This is where he got the idea for his first product, Chikin Ramen, which is cooked, flavoured and then dehydrated ramen noodles that could be prepared by boiling for three minutes.
Not one to stop at one good idea, Ando followed Chikin Noodles with Cup Noodles in 1971 (known as Pot Noodle in the UK), inspired by customers who used coffee cups as ramen bowls. Ando was also known for his great quotes. He once said: "Eating wisely will enhance beauty and health". Ando ate chicken ramen every day and lived to the age of 96.