According to a Business Insider report, the lucrative Doritos Locos Taco product of Mexican restaurant chain Taco Bell was allegedly a brainchild of a team of ex-interns who joined a contest twenty years ago. The reported $1 billion idea was purportedly cooked up by a team led by Andrea Watt.
Telling the Huffington Post, Watt said that they pitched the product idea to Taco Bell executives in an intern competition. Although the team has lost the contest, Watt has been consistent with the fact that the idea could be a reality in the future. Since then, the Huffington Post said that Watt has boasted about the idea to friends and possible employers, and listed in her LinkedIn profile that she is the original creator of the food product. Watt also reportedly convinced her husband to move mementos from her Taco Bell internship to two family homes.
According to Watt, her husband was the one who broke the news to her that her Doritos Tacos idea has been produced by Taco Bell last year. The UK news site that Taco Bell has netted over a billion dollars in sales due to a product eerily similar to Watt's pitch, based on her photos.
Watt, sharing her reaction to the Huffington Post about the Taco Bell product's release in 2012, said, "When I saw it come out, my jaw almost dropped. I'm surprised it took so long, it was just so obvious to us then. When we did our presentation they were like, ‘It's not really that marketable,' and we were like, ‘What?'"
Taco Bell director of public affairs and engagement Rob Poetsch told the Huffington Post in an email that the Doritos Locos Taco was the brainchild of not Watt and her team, but of the teams at Frito Lay and the company. He said, "Good ideas can come from anywhere, but an idea without execution does not make a successful product. 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."
Interestingly, the UK news site obtained three photos, with one showing Watt and her team together holding one of their sales pitch's boards. Another showed promotional materials of Watt's team for the Doritos taco. The last one, was a letter coming from Taco Bell's Product Development and Packaging Senior Director Pail Rosenthal to her, which was a feedback about her team's idea.
The interns, including Watt, insisted that they will not pursue any monetary claims for their alleged idea, the Huffington Post added.
