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| Product type | Cheese curl, popcorn, macaroni and cheese |
|---|---|
| Owner | PepsiCo (via Frito-Lay) |
| Country | United States |
| Introduced | 1948 |
| Markets | Worldwide |
| Previous owners | The Frito Company |
| Website | cheetos.com |
Cheetos (formerly styled as Chee-tos until 1998) is a crunchy corn-cheese puff snack brand made by Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo. Fritos creator Charles Elmer Doolin invented Cheetos in 1948, and began national distribution in the United States. The initial success of Cheetos was a contributing factor to the merger between The Frito Company and H.W. Lay & Company in 1961 to form Frito-Lay. In 1965 Frito-Lay became a subsidiary of The Pepsi-Cola Company, forming PepsiCo, the current owner of the Cheetos brand.
In 2010, Cheetos was ranked as the top selling brand of cheese puffs in its primary market of the U.S.; worldwide the annual retail sales totaled approximately $4 billion. The original Crunchy Cheetos are still in production but the product line has since expanded to include 21 different types of Cheetos in North America alone. As Cheetos are sold in more than 36 countries, the flavor and composition is often varied to match regional taste and cultural preferences—such as Savory American Cream in China, and Strawberry Cheetos in Japan.[1]
- ^ "Strawberry Flavored Cheetos Seduce Sweet-Loving Snackers". inventorspot.com. Archived from the original on 23 January 2021. Retrieved 2 December 2014.