Doritos creator dies

September 27, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Dallas Morning News

DALLAS

Arch Clark West will have the epitome of a marketing man’s epitaph.

His family plans to sprinkle Doritos at his graveside service Saturday at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas.

West, the retired Frito-Lay executive credited with creating Doritos, died Tuesday of natural causes at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. He was 97.

“We are tossing Doritos chips in before they put the dirt over the urn,” said his daughter, Jana Hacker of Allen, Texas. “He’ll love it.”

West had a food-industry reputation when the Frito Co. recruited him to be its marketing vice president in 1960. He had worked for both Lever Brothers and Young & Rubicam in New York as a liaison between the creative teams and clients that included Jell-O.

West was inspired to create Doritos after Frito merged with H.W. Lay & Co. in 1961. He was on a family vacation to California at the time.

“If you ever watch ‘Salty Snacks’ on the History Channel, they tell the story,” his daughter said. “We were near San Diego, and he stumbled on some little shack where they were making some interesting kind of chip.”

West liked the concept, but couldn’t sell the idea to management back in Dallas.

“He got some money from a budget and started to do some R and D that the big wigs didn’t know about,” Hacker said.

Doritos, the first tortilla chip to be sold nationally, became a multimillion-dollar product for Frito-Lay, now part of PepsiCo Inc.