Who popularized triangle-shaped tortilla chips in the 1940s?

Rebecca Webb Carranza popularized triangle-shaped tortilla chips in the 1940s. At the El Zarape Tortilla Factory in southwest Los Angeles, she found a useful purpose for misshapen tortillas rejected by an automated manufacturing machine.

Carranza cut the imperfect tortillas into triangles, fried them, and sold the crisp pieces as snack food. The idea turned a production defect into a marketable product, helping establish the triangular tortilla chip shape that later became closely associated with nachos and dipping.

Triangle-shaped fried tortilla pieces also have an earlier connection to nachos: Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya used triangular fried tortillas when he created nachos in Mexico in 1943. Carranza’s contribution was significant in popularizing the chips as a packaged commercial snack in the United States, rather than inventing every earlier form of fried tortilla.