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Tony Liberto with Ricos' expanded offerings.
It’s hard to imagine that before 1976, sports fans didn’t have the option of ordering gameday concession-stand nachos.
After all, this truly Tex-Mex cuisine had been around since 1940, the invention of Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya, who was a maître d’ at a restaurant in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, in Mexico.
As Ignacio’s innovation — fried corn tortillas cut into fourths and served with melted cheese — caught on, many restaurants in and around the border followed suit.
After only a few years, nachos became a staple of Tex-Mex, served predominantly only in restaurants. The issue with serving the now iconic chips-and-cheese pairing outside of a restaurant setting was time. It takes about 15 minutes to melt the cheese properly.
But this notion didn’t deter Frank Liberto, who is recognized around the world as the man who invented concession nachos, making the scrumptious bite an essential part of ballgame fare, beginning just down the road to baseball’s Texas Rangers, and eventually spreading to other entertainment venues.
Frank was head of his family’s food business, Liberto Specialty Company, now Ricos Products Co., circa the 1970s.
Frank was part of a family-run legacy that goes back to 1909, when the Liberto family business moved its previously established Crescent Market from Beaumont to San Antonio — rebranding it Liberto Market and Grocery.
Though still based in San Antonio, Ricos has a plant in Arlington.
According to the company, Rosario “Frank” Liberto and his son Enrico ‘Rico’ Liberto expanded its business by producing and selling roasted peanuts and soon turned their family business into one of the first ‘concession supply jobbers’ in the U.S. By 1934, the company expanded into selling institutional wholesale foods and imported spices, peanuts and snow cones under the name Liberto Specialty Company.
The second Frank, Enrico’s son, was a third-generation leader of the business.
Frank peddled what made the company very successful up to that point — popcorn, snow cone syrups, and its biggest seller at the time — peanuts. Frank would eventually expand the business, which catered to stadiums and movie theaters, to include janitorial services. A big fisherman, Frank had a boat he named the "Popcorn Hustler."
Always looking for the next big concession idea, Frank brainstormed making nachos a concession item.
His only problem — time. Add to that, a plate of nachos was a bit more expensive than the typical gameday attendees might be willing to spend. Certainly, more expensive than a bag of peanuts or a hot dog. (Yeah, we know. Today, a trip to the concession stand could require a bank loan.)
Eventually, Frank, along with two city of Arlington employees, Tony Ayala and, oddly enough, another Jerry Jones started melting cheese as an experiment. It soon became apparent that his nacho concept would work if pre-melted cheese could be heated on the spot and poured over chips. After searching around for months, Frank would eventually find a cheese source in Mexico.
“He thought about it and he sourced the cheese sauce,” says Tony Liberto, Frank’s son who is the current CEO of Ricos. The cheese sauce, which is proprietary and barely cheese at all, was a product that required water and jalapeno juice and was also ready to pour in timely manner.
“He sourced the peppers from Mexico, and he sourced the tortilla chips, and he went over to Arlington Stadium and said, ‘Hey, I'd like to introduce this new item here. It's called nachos.’ And they said no.”
Rangers officials at that time said they were fine with the concessions already on the menu, mostly popcorn and hot dogs.
“Dad's very persistent,” Tony says. “He kept asking and asking, and they said, ‘All right, if you build your own little nacho stands, little nacho cart, we'll let you put them throughout the stadium, but not in our concessions.’”
Frank quickly built several nacho carts, set them up inside of the stadium and started selling nachos at Rangers games in 1976.
“They ended up selling like hotcakes, and people were lined up and sitting there, 10, 15 people deep,” he says. “You'd hear the crack of the bat, you'd hear the stadium roar, and Dad had VHS video of this at the time to kind of prove that this was going to be a success, and no one moved out of line.”
But this was just the beginning of Frank’s idea showing promise. According to Tony, hot dog, popcorn, and soda sales all went way up after the introduction of this molten cheesy treat at Ranger’s games.
“It was because of one little ingredient called the jalapeno pepper,” Tony says. “When people finished an order of nachos, they had that spice in their mouth. So, they go get another beverage, they go get another beer. All the sales of those items increased when nachos got in the stadium.”
Eventually, nachos would make its way to Texas Stadium, where things really took off. Legend has it that this Tex-Mex treat was given to the sports announcers covering the Dallas Cowboys game for a Monday Night Football broadcast. It so happened that one of the announcers for this game was Howard Cosell, renowned for many reasons. After indulging in this gooey treat during a commercial break, Cosell inadvertently made nachos a household name creating one of the first non-internet viral moments.
“He called them ‘nacos’ instead of nachos, and he gave us some live press there on Monday Night Football. So that was great,” Tony says. “This was before social media. I mean you only had four channels, three English-speaking channels, and one Spanish-speaking channel, and that's all I ever had. So that got a lot of buzz.”
Already in partnership with several movie theaters, United Artist Theaters came calling soon after the Cosell shoutout giving Frank an opportunity. He actually didn’t think nachos were a good fit for a theater environment.
Tony recalls the encounter: “Dad said no. ‘This is a very messy item. It's gooey cheese. You guys have velvet seats and carpeting in your theaters, and, no, it's going to be a mess and you're going to call me to pay your cleaning bills.’ He goes, ‘I don't think it's going to work.’ And they insisted and dad agreed to give ’em a test of a handful of theaters in Dallas.”
Thirty days later, United Artists called Frank back, but instead of asking for a cleaning bill reimbursement, they pleaded that he go nationwide with his nachos concept in their theaters ASAP in the late ’70s.
“That's how we got our nachos in the theater business nationwide,” he says.
This deal would eventually push Frank’s nacho concept into the global market when United Artists Theaters asked if it could supply their German theater chain.
“All of a sudden were selling internationally through the dovetail off of the United Artists expansion. So, yeah, we were doing that for years,” Tony says.
Soon, Ricos products would be available at Sam’s Club pushing its way into the retail realm for everyday consumers to enjoy.
Today, Ricos products are present in more than 60 countries with a network of more than 200 distributors worldwide, according to the company’s website. Other products outside of the realm of nacho cheese and jalapenos include snow cones, pickles, popcorn, and chips made from scratch.
In fact, Ricos makes the claim that it is the largest family-owned tortilla chip manufacturing plant in the world, which includes branded tortilla chips like the On the Boarder restaurant chain brand available in grocery stores nationally.
“I haven’t been out to a Rangers game recently, but I know there’s a mural out there that has an image of our Ricos logo,” Tony says. “It’s neat to think we’re a part of their legacy.”