Arch West had the heart of an entrepreneur and liked to take risks. Unfortunately he worked for Frito-Lay and had bosses to convince.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

[AirVantage Heating & Cooling Ad]

Dave Young:

Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. I’m Dave Young and Stephen Semple is here with another Empire Builders story. And today, whispered in my ear as the countdown started that we’re going to talk about Doritos and Tostitos. And my brain instantly had electric shot go through it because are they the same? Are Tostitos and Doritos, is it the same company? Is Frito-Lay-

Stephen Semple:

Same company. Yeah, yep. Frito-Lay.

Dave Young:

Yeah. How about Takis?

Stephen Semple:

Oh, I don’t know.

Dave Young:

They get bought up yet?

Stephen Semple:

I don’t know. But [inaudible 00:02:04] did, they were actually created by Frito-Lay.

Dave Young:

By Frito-Lay. Again, back to my childhood, we’d go to the lake in the summer and always had bags and bags of nacho cheese flavored Doritos.

Stephen Semple:

There you go.

Dave Young:

And my mom used to say, “We’re going to eat so many of these. There’s just going to be corners poking out of us.” Oh my gosh. They’ve been around a while.

Stephen Semple:

They have been around a while. Yeah, they were launched in 1966.

Dave Young:

Doritos or …

Stephen Semple:

Doritos was done first and it was launched by Frito-Lay in 1966.

Dave Young:

All right.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Today, Doritos is part of Pepsi. And the estimated sales coming from Doritos is like 2 to $3 billion a year in sales. That’s a lot of cheese nachos.

Dave Young:

It is.

Stephen Semple:

It’s one of the top snack brands in the world sold in over 100 countries. So now while it’s a product inside of a big company, there’s a reason why I feel like it’s a bit of an empire building story because it’s an interesting little story of risk taking an entrepreneurship inside of this big corporation. That’s why I felt like it still kind of fits.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

And it’s all because of the actions of a guy by the name of Arch West, who’s a Frito-Lay executive. And when you hear this story, you realize he’s got a heart of an entrepreneur and is a bit of a risk-taker.

Dave Young:

Arch West.

Stephen Semple:

Arch West. So Arch came from nothing. He was raised in a youth home. He went to the military. And after the military, he gets into food marketing and he becomes a VP at Frito-Lay. Now, our story starts in the late 1950s. And like all good stories, it starts with a visit to Disneyland at Anaheim because that’s where all great stories start.

Dave Young:

So Arch goes to Disneyland.

Stephen Semple:

So Arch goes to Disneyland. And in Disneyland, there’s a restaurant called Casa de Fritos, which of course has been created. I don’t know if it’s still there, but at the time Casa de Fritos, which was basically created for distributing Frito’s products. It’s like this made up Mexican restaurant in the international food area of Disneyland. And remember, this is the ’50s.

Dave Young:

So Frito’s was in existence.

Stephen Semple:

Yes. Fritos was in existence.

Dave Young:

The little curly corn chip thingies.

Stephen Semple:

Correct. That was in existence.

Dave Young:

So I keep thinking like Lay’s Corporation-

Stephen Semple:

Frito-Lay had already merged at this point.

Dave Young:

So Frito became Frito-Lay?

Stephen Semple:

Yep. So it was Frito-Lay, wasn’t part of Pepsi yet, but it was Frito-Lay.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

And they had this restaurant in Disneyland called Casa De Fritos for distributing Frito products. And as I said, it’s this made up Mexican restaurant, because remember this is the 50s in Disneyland. So how authentic is it? Probably not at all.

Dave Young:

Probably had Speedy Gonzalez and his friends.

Stephen Semple:

Right-

Dave Young:

… Taking orders. Sure.

Stephen Semple:

As you can imagine. But as the story goes, what was happening was they were throwing out … At the end of the day, if tortillas were left over, they were throwing them out. And a Mexican delivery guy said, “You shouldn’t be throwing these things out. You should cut them up and deep-fry them and serve them as tortilla chips.”

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

So Arch tastes these tortilla chips and he was like, “Wow, these have a really interesting flavor.” And he thinks to himself, I think there’s an untapped opportunity here and we can make something of this. So first he’s got to sell the ideas to his bosses. So Arch West makes a presentation to the executives and they’ll look at him and say, “Yeah, leave development to R&D. They create the stuff you sell it.”

Dave Young:

Stay in your lane, buddy.

Stephen Semple:

Stay in your lane, buddy. Now remember I said at the beginning, Arch is a risk-taker and has the heart of an entrepreneur? So what does Arch do with this no?

Dave Young:

#243: Doritos & Tostitos – A Risk That Paid Off