We Have Disneyland To Thank For The Invention Of Doritos
At Frito-Lay, the company that produces Doritos, new chip recipes and flavors are carefully crafted by a culinary team of chefs and food scientists. Doritos, however, weren't created like most chips. They weren't developed at a Frito-Lay factory but rather at one of the restaurants at Disneyland due to a chance occurrence. Frito-Lay technically didn't even invent them.
It all started in 1955, when Casa de Fritos, a restaurant owned by Frito-Lay, opened in Disneyland. At this Tex-Mex-style restaurant, Fritos were served with every meal, but eventually, they would be replaced with the chips we now know as Doritos.
Even though Casa de Fritos was owned and operated by Frito-Lay, a salesman from Alex Foods, the food distributor of the restaurant's tortillas, came up with the idea, not Frito-Lay. After seeing one of the cooks throw away stale tortillas, he suggested that they fry them up instead and start serving tortilla chips.
How Doritos grew beyond Disneyland
Even though Casa de Fritos already served a chip product (Fritos), the restaurant still added the tortilla chips to the menu. Frito-Lay didn't know about this addition until Archibald Clark West, the company's marketing vice president, stopped by the restaurant. Once he realized how much customers loved them, he took the opportunity to make them into something bigger, commissioning Alex Foods to produce them.
West came up with the name Doritos while on a business trip to Mexico to trademark Fritos. He heard a local describe the color as "oro," meaning gold, and when figuring out what to name the Disneyland chip, West decided to tack on "ito" at the end for brand consistency with the other Frito-Lay chips — Fritos and Cheetos. The newly named Doritos was first test marketed in Southern California and ended up selling so well that the chips were made available nationwide in 1966.
The original Doritos flavor
With varieties like Cool Ranch, Nacho Cheese, Dinamita, and Flamin' Hot, most people think of Doritos as flavored corn chips, but the first Doritos were very bland. The ones at the Disneyland restaurant were just plain tortilla chips, and when Frito-Lay started selling them, they had one flavor: Toasted Corn. In 1967, a year after the national rollout, Frito-Lay started seasoning Doritos with taco seasoning, but it wasn't until 1972 that the iconic Nacho Cheese flavor came about.
Since then, Doritos has become much bigger than the restaurant it started in. Casa de Fritos is unfortunately no longer there, as Frito-Lay and Disney parted ways in 1982. Casa Mexicana took over the spot, which turned into Rancho del Zocalo in 2001. You can still visit Rancho del Zocalo, but you won't find Doritos on the menu like you could in the 60s. Luckily, you can get Doritos at practically any grocery store.