Fritos® Pie: Stories, Recipes, and More

Chapter 11 Then and Now

Chapter 11 Then and Now I RECENTLy met Indra Nooyi for the first time. She is the current CEo of PepsiCo. (Frito Lay merged with PepsiCo in 1965.) PepsiCo is a conglomerate made up of Pepsi, Frito Lay, Tropicana, Quaker, and Gatorade. Having read about Indra in the cover story of the March 2008 issue of Fortune magazine, I felt as if I knew her already. I was impressed by the similarities between her and my dad. In bold font, the magazine says, “As a vegetarian, she’s not who you’d think would be leading the maker of sugary soda and salty snacks.” This is a perfect parallel to Dad, the vegetarian, health-obsessed leader of the early snack food industry. Indra has led PepsiCo in a more healthful and environmentally friendly direction since she joined it in 1994. PepsiCo’s previous CEo, Roger Enrico, had also started turning the company in that direction, acquiring companies that made healthful beverages such as Aquafina, Tropicana, and Sobe. He also acquired Quaker oats in 2001 and announced in 2002 the removal of trans fats from Doritos, Tostitos, and Cheetos. Naked Juice is the company’s newest acquisition, following Izze sparkling soda, Lipton bottled iced tea (this is a joint venture of PepsiCo with Lipton), Starbucks canned Frappuccino (a joint venture with Starbucks), Miss Vicki’s chips, Flat Earth fruit and veggie chips, and True North products. Both Roger Enrico and now Indra Nooyi’s initiatives are a move from “fun for you” to “better for you” and “good for you” products, to use the company’s successive marketing language. I believe this is a direction Dad wanted to take the company in right from the start. My father’s knowledge about food, from growing to consuming, was vast. Dad’s experimental sesame crops in Midlothian and Big Wells were a step in the direction of the health food market. I suspect he was considering using sesame oil as a secret ingredient in his vegetable oil blend, but ◆ 147 I don’t know for sure because the oil blend was and still is a secret. As the president of the Frito Company, in 1936 Dad became the first person to import sesame oil from Japan, and his involvement in developing, selling, and finding new uses for cold-rolled sesame oil was extensive. In addition to producing sunflower oil and cold-rolled sesame oil, Dad considered producing sesame candy. He found a cheap source of dried date crumbles and soon developed a recipe using sesame and dates (see the recipe section of this chapter). Both sesame candy and cold-rolled sesame oil are standards in health-food grocery stores today. The antioxidant properties of sesame seeds give foods made with them greater freshness and a longer shelf life. The oil of sesame seeds stays fresh for years. Dad was interested in forward-looking agricultural practices that might be considered “green” farming today. In a letter to his father-in-law he suggested an experiment using manure from the cattle pens as a compost to grow alfalfa. He also wanted Dad (in his Bogart suit) giving instructions to John Campbell, among blooming sesame plants. Dad’s venture into sesame was a step in the direction of the health food market. 148 ◆ CHAPTER 11 to study root rot as it affected alfalfa and how to overcome it. He hoped that he and Grandpa Coleman could solve the problem on their own, but he wanted to make investigations through the authorities as well, so he got involved with the Southwest Agricultural Institute. In late May of 1959, only a couple of months before his death, Dad was appointed a trustee of the Institute. My father died at the age of 56. He had a number of heart attacks over a period of years and the last one killed him. Helen Harden, who was still working at the company when my father died, said, “In 1952 Mr. Doolin had already had a couple of heart attacks. In 1954 Mr. Doolin had a severe heart attack and that was the time when he brought in John Williamson to be the executive vice president. He had a couple more and then [had another] the year when he died. That was 1959.” After his initial heart attacks Dad knew he might not make it, and he prepared the company to proceed without him by appointing a capable president...