The Controversy Behind The Invention Of Flamin' Hot Cheetos

Flamin' Hot Cheetos have amassed something of a cult following over the years, inspiring spinoff products like mac and cheese, lip balm, ice cream. Most recently, the spicy snack also inspired a feature film called "Flamin' Hot." The movie chronicles the story of Richard Montañez, a Frito-Lay plant janitor in California who invented the popular vending machine staple.

Except for one small hiccup: He didn't. That's right; according to a 2021 investigative piece by the Los Angeles Times, Montañez is not the actual creator of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. "None of our records show that Richard was involved in any capacity in the Flamin' Hot test market," Frito-Lay said in a statement to The Times, acknowledging that Montañez did rise from cleaning crew to a marketing director over the course of his tenure with Frito-Lay. "We value Richard's many contributions to our company, especially his insights into Hispanic consumers, but we do not credit the creation of Flamin' Hot Cheetos or any Flamin' Hot products to him."

The idea for Flamin' Hot Cheetos, by Montañez's account, happened in his garage. He had been working as a janitor at a Frito-Lay plant in Southern California in the late 1980s when one of the machines responsible for coating the Cheetos chips with cheese broke down. Montañez remembers bringing some of these "naked" Cheetos home to experiment with. Inspired by his Mexican roots and the vendors who sold street corn dusted with chili powder and squirted with lime juice, Montañez seasoned the Cheetos with chili powder and let friends and family sample the snack. The next thing he knew, he was pitching the fiery Cheetos to PepsiCo/Frito-Lay executives.

Al Carey was one of those executives who encouraged Montañez and who corroborated his story, although the Times points out some inconsistencies with the timeline of Carey's version of events. Montañez did, however, climb the corporate ladder at PepsiCo and was involved with some product pitches, the Times noted. He later went on to become a regular on the speaking engagement circuit, he authored two books, and his story became a biopic on the silver screen. He maintains that he was involved in the creation of the cult classic Flamin' Hot Cheeto.

But no one else who worked in product development in the early '90s remembers Montañez's version of events. In reality, the Times traced back the origins of Flamin' Hot Cheetos to a Frito-Lay employee named Lynne Greenfeld. Armed with an MBA degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Greenfeld joined the company in 1989 and is credited with coining the Flamin' Hot brand name and spearheading the product into test markets across the United States ahead of its official launch in 1992. The trademark for "Flamin' Hot" is dated August 1990.

Greenfeld reportedly had no idea Montañez was taking credit for the product until 2018 when she saw an article online about the story. "It is disappointing that 20 years later, someone who played no role in this project would begin to claim our experience as his own and then personally profit from it," she told the Times.

Amid all the public back and forth, parent company Frito-Lay is now taking a more neutral stance when asked about the origins of its infamous product: "At Frito-Lay, and PepsiCo, a product or flavor extension is the work of a number of people across functions as diverse as R&D, sales and marketing, all of whom are proud of the products they help create," the company told the newspaper.