- [Narrator] You remember this can.
The sweet sauce, the soft noodle.
This was childhood.
- [Child] Mmmm!
- [Narrator] But did you know that
Chef Boyardee was an actual chef?
He was, his name was Hector, and he made a mean pasta sauce.
But it wasn't Hector's sauce that made Chef Boyardee
the household name that it is today.
You can thank the U.S. Military for that.
In the 1930s, Hector Boiardi opened up an Italian
restaurant in Ohio and everyone was like,
- [Man] Oh my god, I love your sauce.
- [Narrator] So he started selling it,
and he sold a lot of it.
A lot, a lot.
By 1938, he had opened up his own factory
selling his sauce and pasta can.
- [Man] Ask for Chef Boyardee's spaghetti dinner,
only about 15 cents a serving.
- [Narrator] Then, World War II happened
and a phone call was made.
The U.S. Military called Hector and said something like.
- [Man] Help make food for the troops.
- [Narrator] He already had the canning
infrastructure so Hector said, yeah, alright.
His company shifted from a civilian
consumer base to a military one.
Chef Boyardee became the largest supplier
of rations to U.S. and allied forces.
Production was happening 24/7.
By the end of the war, the factory was too large
and the military demand no longer existed.
Hector didn't know what to do,
so he sold it to this large company called American Home Products
who were all like,
- [Man] We got this.
- [Narrator] They quickly rebranded and distributed
the can as easy to make at-home meals
and filled supermarket shelves across the United States.
So today when we buy Chef Boyardee,
we're actually eating rebranded World War II field rations.
Yup.