Fritos® Pie: Stories, Recipes, and More

Chapter 2 Cooking with Fritos

I N 1937 the Frito Company created a point-of-sale department . (“Point of sale” refers to marketing that is used in stores, such as rack headers and recipe folders; the point-ofsale department has since been replaced by two departments, marketing and sales.) The point-of-sale department came up with the idea for a “Cooking with Fritos” campaign. or perhaps Grandmother Doolin came up with the idea when she used FriChapter 2 Cooking with Fritos Rack headers. I believe the Frito Company pioneered the use of coined words and misspellings (as in “krisp”) in advertising as an attention-grabbing device. 12 ◆ tos in her fruitcake and in other recipes, and the company just made it official when its campaign began in 1937. Even before that, in 1935, the company advertised a recipe competition in which cash prizes were awarded for Fritos recipes sent in by members of the general public. That same year, the prize-winning recipes were printed in a recipe booklet , which was available free to anyone who wrote in asking for one. Prize-winning recipes were also dropped into 15-cent bags of Fritos. Sometime in the 1930s, before my parents met and married, my mother was one of the people who submitted a recipe—for Fritoque Pie. (Fritoque is pronounced “Fritokey.” In fact, I thought it was Fritokey until recently, when I once saw it in print in Nell Morris’s collection of newspaper clippings. See chapter 12, “Cooking with Fritos Today,” for the recipe, which Mom and I once reconstructed.) For this Mom received one dollar, as did all the other winners of the contest. The COOKING WITH FRITOS ◆ 13 A Fritos corn chips-laden Thanksgiving menu printed in the Frito Bandwagon, November 1950. It featured recipes from the company’s Cooking with Fritos promotional campaign. 14 ◆ company soon had to abandon the recipe competition because of the overwhelming response. Some of the recipes sent in by the “housewives of Texas” during the 1935 recipe competition ended up being used by the company over and over in its marketing. In 1950 the prize-winning recipes were appropriated by Nell Morris and, along with other Fritos recipes, given the company’s signature label, “by Daisy Dean, Home Economist.” In 1937, the new Fritos point-of-sale advertising department created the first Cooking with Fritos point-of-sale recipe— Fritos Corn Chip Dressing. (See the recipe at the end of this chapter.) The Fritos Corn Chip Dressing recipe was attached to a rack header next to bags of Fritos in grocery stores. This point-of-sale display was the first of many featuring various recipes with Fritos as an ingredient. These displays soon started appearing in grocery stores in Texas and throughout the Southwest . Stores where the displays appeared sold 40 percent more chips than they had before the display campaign began. The Fritos corn chip dressing recipe was attached to a rack header next to bags of Fritos in grocery stores. This point-of-sale display was the first of many featuring various recipes with Fritos as an ingredient. COOKING WITH FRITOS ◆ 15 In 1939 a second booklet containing Fritos recipes was printed and distributed at the State Restaurant Association Convention in San Antonio, where free bags of Fritos were also given out. In 1945 Dad’s new office manager, Mary Livingston, in an effort to familiarize herself with all of the aspects of the company, began cooking the Fritos recipes at work. Sometimes she stayed until midnight cooking in the little kitchen next The Frito Kid was a regular visitor to grocery store displays. The Kid got passed from store to store by deliverymen according to a schedule. 16 ◆ CHAPTER 2 to Dad’s office (the whole office building was in a converted house). Soon afterwards she went on the road, actively marketing the Cooking with Fritos idea at conventions of food preparation experts—convincing dieticians that Fritos were needed as a staple in the pantry and that they should use Fritos in their cafeteria food. Eventually Cooking with Fritos booths became larger and more widespread at such conventions, popping up The Frito Kid visits another display. The Frito Kid strikes again. COOKING WITH FRITOS ◆ 17 in states as far away as Utah when Fritos’ growing distribution made the chips available there. one booth even won an award one...