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Rebecca Webb Carranza transformed discarded tortillas into chips at her Los Angeles Mexican delicatessen in the 1940s.
These salvaged scraps evolved into Doritos when Frito-Lay began mass-producing tortilla chips in 1966.
Today, tortilla chips generate over $4 billion in annual U.S. sales and appear everywhere from Super Bowl parties to fine dining restaurants.
Mexican cooks had been making similar crispy corn snacks for centuries.
In village kitchens, they sliced leftover corn tortillas into wedges and fried them in clay pots of hot oil until golden brown.
They called these crunchy pieces totopos—normally serving them with beans, salsa, and meat.
In 1940s Los Angeles, Rebecca Webb Carranza turned broken tortillas into a snack food empire.
At her El Zarape Tortilla Factory, she noticed the automated tortilla maker rejected thousands of misshapen pieces each day.
Rather than discard them, she cut these tortillas into triangles, fried them crisp, and sold them for 10 cents a bag at her factory's deli counter.
The triangular chips first served local customers, then spread through neighborhood markets, and finally reached grocery stores across California.
Each batch started with corn tortillas, fresh from her factory's ovens.
In 1943, Mexican restaurant owner Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya needed a quick snack for a group of American military wives at his Piedras Negras joint.
He cut corn tortillas into triangles, fried them until crisp, topped them with shredded yellow cheese, and heated the dish until the cheese melted.
He finished it with sliced jalapeños.
He nicknamed his new dish "nachos" after himself.
In 1964, a Disneyland restaurant called Casa de Fritos faced a problem: stale tortillas.
Rather than discard them, the kitchen staff cut these tortillas into triangles, dropped them in hot oil until they crisped, and dusted them with salt and Mexican spices.
The resulting chips caught the attention of Frito-Lay executive Arch West during a restaurant visit.
West saw potential in these seasoned tortilla chips and pushed Frito-Lay (subsidiary of PepsiCo) to produce them at scale.
The company launched Doritos nationally in 1966, choosing a name that means "little golden things" in Spanish.
The brand now generates over $1 billion in annual sales.
In 1975, tortilla chips jumped from California supermarket shelves to stores across America.
While Fritos had dominated party snack bowls since 1932, tortilla chips began claiming their own space next to guacamole and salsa dips.
The crisp triangles rode the wave of Mexican restaurants opening in major cities—places like Chi-Chi's and El Torito that taught diners to expect baskets of warm chips beside their enchiladas.
Rebecca Webb Carranza won the Golden Tortilla award in 1994 for creating the triangle-shaped tortilla chip in 1944.
Her invention spread from her small shop to restaurants and grocery stores worldwide, where tortilla chips now generate billions in annual sales.
The award recognized how her practical solution to reduce waste became a cornerstone of Mexican-American snack food.
Americans buy more tortilla chips than any other country.
They fill grocery store shelves from Maine to California, with sales reaching $4.6 billion in 2023 alone.
Today, these chips appear at Super Bowl parties beside bowls of guacamole and at Cinco de Mayo celebrations next to fresh salsa.
Grocery stores stack them in dedicated aisles, while gas stations keep them near the register for quick purchases.
The tortilla chip's success in America paved its path worldwide.
Japanese convenience stores now stock them beside rice crackers.
European cafes serve them with dips.
But Americans still eat more tortilla chips than all other countries combined.
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