Before he came up with the idea that changed his life, Richard Montañez, the son of a Mexican immigrant, grew up in a migrant labor camp in Southern California. He and his ten siblings lived in a one-bedroom apartment with their parents before moving to an 800-square foot three-bedroom home. Those experiences shaped him. "I have a PhD of being poor, hungry and determined," the janitor-turned-inventor-turned-executive tells the Washington Post. "And I think when you've experienced those three things, there's a lot of wisdom. When you've been poor, there's so much innovation that comes out of that." Montañez, now in his 50s, has been innovative since grade school. When his mom sent him to school on the first day of 3rd grade with a burrito for lunch, he was embarrassed. It was the 1960s, and back then, "very few people had seen a burrito," he writes in his memoir "A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie." "There I was with this burrito and with everyone staring at me. I put it back in my bag and hid it." The next day, when he asked his mom to make him "a bologna sandwich and a cupcake like the other kids," she instead packed him two burritos: one for him to eat and one for him to use to make a friend. By the end of the week, the seven-year-old entrepreneur was selling burritos for $0.25 each.

"I learned at that moment that there was something special about being different, that there was a reason that we all just couldn't fit into the same box," Montañez writes. After struggling to pick up on basic reading and writing in school, Montañez dropped out before getting his diploma and worked a series of low-paying jobs, including slaughtering chickens and gardening. He was working at a car wash when a friend came by and told him that Frito-Lay was hiring. He went to the Frito-Lay plant in Southern California, asked for an application and had his future wife fill it out on his behalf, since he "could barely read or write," he recalls. He returned the application later that day and the company hired him as a janitor. The idea for Flamin' Hot Cheetos came to him when, one day, a machine broke in the assembly line and a batch of Cheetos didn't get dusted with their standard orange cheese powder. Montañez took the plain Cheetos home and experimented with putting chili powder on them, an idea inspired by a street vendor in his neighborhood, who made Mexican grilled corn with lime and chili.