Doritos Locos Taco might have premiered in 2012, but ex-Taco Bell interns have told the Huffington Post that they are the ones who first pitched the billion dollar idea way back in 1995 as a part of an internship competition. And they lost.
While the ex-interns don’t expect any compensation—”I’m sure I signed away that anything I pitched to them was their property anyway,” Andrea Watt said—they do want some recognition.
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“I remember being mad we didn’t win because I thought we had the best product,” fellow ex-intern Roy Brown told HuffPost. Although the team did make the fatal error of calling the product “Dorito” instead of “Doritos” tacos, $1 billion in sales after the similar product’s launch shows that it was a pretty winning idea.
“Good ideas can come from anywhere, but an idea without execution does not make a successful product,” Taco Bell director of public affairs and engagement Rob Poetsch told HuffPost. “The concept of making a taco shell out of Doritos may have come to people’s minds which is why we’ve had no shortage of those who have claimed it was their idea.”
