Fritos® Pie is an insider’s look at the never-before-told story of the Frito Company written by Kaleta Doolin, daughter of the company’s founder. Filled with personal anecdotes, more than 150 vintage and newly created recipes, and stories, this book recounts the company’s early days, the 1961 merger that created Frito-Lay, Inc., and beyond.
In 1932 C. E. Doolin, the operator of a struggling San Antonio confectionery, purchased for $100 the recipe for a fried corn chip product and a crude device used to make it, along with a list of nineteen customer accounts. From that humble beginning sprang Fritos® (“fries” in Spanish), a product that, thanks to Doolin’s marketing ingenuity and a visionary approach to food technology, would become one of the best-known brands in America.
One of the first firms to utilize point-of-sale advertising, the Frito Company developed dozens of recipes intended to get American homemakers “Cooking with Fritos.” Indeed, Doolin shows that many of the vintage recipes developed by her grandmother, her father, and company employees became integral to the company’s marketing success. The book includes recipes—for everything from appetizers to desserts, all using Fritos as an ingredient—along with the author’s comments and anecdotes about her adventures experimenting with them in her kitchen.
Doolin also draws upon hours of interviews with her mother, siblings, cousins, and many of her father's closest business associates as well as focused research in Frito-Lay corporate archives and other collections to paint a portrait of her father as not only an innovator in food marketing but also a visionary inventor, a forward-thinking agriculturalist, and an entrepreneur with an amazing grasp of detail.
“Kaleta has written a deep-fried, wide-eyed American saga of family and food.”—Davia Nelson of NPR’s award winning
Kitchen Sisters
“Fun and detailed glimpse into the history of an American snack-food icon.”—Rob DeWalt, New Mexico-based food writer
“Fritos® Pie is a well-written book covering a subject which in some way touches everyone. . . . The book is more than a business matter, it deals with family and memories.”—Jerry Turner,
Mexia News
“Doolin uses her access to the extensive Frito-Lay archives well, and the advertising that she shares provides a useful time-line of both Frito-Lay history, as well as advertising trends of the last fifty years. . . . For those interested in Texas food history, this book is certainly worth a look.”—Melissa Prycer,
Legacies