Frito-Lay marketing exec who created first national tortilla chip brand, dead at 97

Arch West, a retired Frito-Lay marketing executive credited with creating Doritos as the first national tortilla chip brand, has died in Dallas at age 97.

A statement issued by the West family says he died Tuesday at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. A graveside service is scheduled for Oct. 1. Daughter Jana Hacker of Allen tells The Dallas Morning News (http://dallasne.ws/qzPm9E) the family plans on “tossing Doritos chips in before they put the dirt over the urn.”

West was a marketing vice president for Dallas-based Frito-Lay in 1961 when, while on a family vacation near San Diego, he found a snack shack selling fried tortilla chips. Hacker says her father got a tepid corporate response to the tortilla chip idea but conducted marketing research that led to the Doritos rollout.