Drive-Thru Dreams - Adam Chandler Page 0,60

eventually wrote a book about Photoshop. The book’s dedication went to Todd. “The guy knew him for a week.”

It was Todd’s Photoshop prowess that would eventually place him in the pathway of Taco Bell history. “He loved taco salad,” Ginger remembers. “He always made them with Doritos.” According to the legend, Todd’s eureka moment arrived one day as he was eating a Taco Bell taco in front of his television. A commercial for Doritos came on, and immediately a lightning quiver of genius trembled through the universe. Doritos and Taco Bell. Taco Bell and Doritos. Two American titans of chemical gastronomy. Todd’s subconscious had been depositing clues for years, and finally, as a true visionary does, he saw an entire galaxy where others had only seen a star.

“Imagine this … taco shells made from Doritos,” he scribbled in a letter he sent to Frito-Lay, the parent company of Doritos. “I know.… It’s an amazing thing to ponder.” And it was. But the suits at Frito-Lay were not receptive. “They were all ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’” Ginger recalled. “‘We don’t take suggestions.’”

So Todd took matters into own hands. In 2009, he founded the Taco Shells Made from Doritos Movement. He would photoshop Nacho Cheese Doritos–colored taco shells onto famous tableaux and share them on Facebook. In one doctored photo, a taco shell sat inside a frame before adoring crowds at the Louvre right beside the Mona Lisa. In another entry, a shell was superimposed onto the hands of Chuck Norris in the midst of a flying ninja kick. There was an alloy-orange taco at Norman Rockwell’s iconic Thanksgiving table, and another being demanded by the protesting crowds at Occupy Wall Street. Another piece showed the hallowed shell levitating within an Albert Einstein thought bubble. The masses were smitten and the food sites swooned. Todd’s movement went viral in those few years when that designation was still meaningful. And somewhere in the distance, a Bell was beginning to sound.

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According to David Peterman, who served as the vice president of new concept operations for Taco Bell in the 1990s, the product that ultimately became the Doritos Locos Taco might have been developed twenty years earlier—back when Taco Bell and Frito-Lay were satellite siblings under the aegis of PepsiCo—were it not for some intercompany chest-puffing and corporate politics.† As he later wrote:

You should know that in approximately 1992, the idea of taco, tostada and taco salad shells coated with a variety of Doritos flavorings from our sister company, Frito-Lay, was evaluated and pursued. At that time, Frito-Lay had recently completed a factory in Mexico that was capable of manufacturing the shells.

Unfortunately, according to Peterman, Frito-Lay opted not to produce the hybrid shells. However, in 2012, with Taco Bell now working in earnest to develop the once-shelved Doritos concept, the company took notice of Todd and the thousands of fans he was collecting. “He called me freaking out,” Jimmy recalls. “I’m like, ‘Calm down, what’s up?’ He’s like, ‘I’m going to Irvine!’ I couldn’t believe it, man. I could not believe it.”

Taco Bell flew Mills out to their shiny Southern California headquarters, a modern massive complex once occupied by a Ford factory. They introduced him to the CEO, took him out for a steak dinner, and showed him the test kitchen where his dream vessel, the Nacho Cheese–flavored Doritos Locos Taco, was being finalized for voyage. Mills became one of the first people in the world to try it, texting Jimmy all the way through. “So he’s sending me pictures: ‘Yeah, I’m going into the mothership!’ And there’s a mariachi band when he gets in! This guy just won a golden ticket. And then he gets up there and goes into the kitchen and gets to eat the first one. He’s kinda live-tweeting this stuff the whole time. He met the CEO. They gave him a T-shirt, and you know what? He gave that away, too.… That’s just the way he was.”

After his trip, Todd posted a picture of the Doritos Locos Taco shell superimposed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner. To the distress of some of his friends, like Jimmy, Todd never sought compensation or credit. “My thinking, just because I had little girls, was ‘Lawyer up, man! You don’t even have to ask for a million, you could probably just put your kids through college.’ He was like, ‘Nah, I’m not gonna do that,’ and that was just the way he was. That was