“They gave some of the Doritos spirit to the Pepsi people, and the Pepsi people just lost their minds and were like, ‘Let’s make a lot of this right now.’”
Lars Williams
Co-Founder
Empirical spirits
.…on how his team partnered with PepsiCo subsidiary Frito-Lay to launch the first-ever Doritos Nacho Cheese spirit, via Fast Company.
Chip-loving spirit fans have spent their adult lives dividing their loyalties between bags of crunchy chips and bottles of spirited spirits—until now. This week, Plano-based Frito-Lay announced the launch of the first-ever distilled Doritos Nacho Cheese spirit, in a collaboration with Copenhagen-based Empirical spirits.
The limited-release launch of Empirical x Doritos Nacho Cheese Spirit “offers a multi-sensorial, delicious beverage experience that smells and tastes just like the real thing,” Frito-Lay says.
“We’re always pushing our fans to try new things, so we figure it’s time we disrupt the spirits category by offering our iconic nacho cheese flavor in a bottle,” Tina Mahal, SVP of Marketing for Frito-Lay North America, said in a statement.
Lars Williams, Chef/Distiller & CEO at Empirical, said his “uncategorized” spirits company has the freedom to experiment with “really interesting flavors and not have to be stuck in a gin box or tequila box or whiskey box.”
Williams told Fast Company he first experimented with distilling Doritos in 2017 after taking a bag from an employee’s lunch, saying he aimed the taste for “that moment of opening the bag and getting that first bite of that first chip.”
Then one day, some PepsiCo executives visited Empirical when Williams wasn’t there.
“I was very clear with the team in Copenhagen to not let the Pepsi people taste the Doritos, because I thought we were going to get sued somehow in some way or the other,” Williams told Fast Company. “They didn’t listen to me, and they gave some of the Doritos spirit to the Pepsi people, and the Pepsi people just lost their minds and were like, ‘Let’s make a lot of this right now.'”
You can read more about the journey from Doritos bag to Doritos bottle in Fast Company’s story.
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