in the international Chef boy ID look-alike contest oh well where's your chef hat you
know the name you know the pasta so find what's behind both with 10 untold truths of Chef Boyardee
not just a brand he's real sure he sounds great and totally real yes
unlike so many mascots you see plastered on boxes and bottles from Captain highliner to the Quaker
Oats man Chef Boyardee was not only a real person but was also a real Chef born etore Boyardee in
piachenza Italy now those are some very authentic Italian names he began working in kitchens as a
teenager in Paris and London he arrived in America in 1914 and changed his name to Hector Boyardee so
it would be easier for the locals to pronounce while he started at the bottom in the kitchen of
the famed Plaza Hotel in New York City he worked his way up to the top becoming head chef only a
few years later in fact by the end of the first world war he oversaw an event at the White House
for returning soldiers serving 2 000 guests in one day impressive wanting to open his own restaurant
he headed east to Cleveland and opened the garden of Italy where the customers were So Satisfied
that they asked for samples of his spaghetti sauce to take home so he sold the sauce and cleaned out
milk bottles this led to the restaurant focusing more on prepared foods that could be bought and
made at home which in the 1920s meant boxes and jars because it was cheaper to use than leftover
milk bottles quite quickly it wasn't just the Cleveland area that wanted his sauce poured over
their pasta so Boyardee opened up a factory in 1928. this makes the most famous canned pasta the
same age as Mickey Mouse he received a gold star from the military you are America true Patriots
while he was born and raised in Italy and did feel a tinge of regret of having to change his birth
name to an Americanized version Hector Boyardee loved his adopted country he had a hard-working
entrepreneurial Spirit at a time when it seemed natural that an immigrant could go from cook to
Chef to restaurant owner to factory owner in a little over 10 years while not being able
to serve in the first world war and being too old to enlist in the second world war he did a great
service to his country during the early 1940s by changing his factory production from meals for
the home front to meals for soldiers after two decades of perfecting the canned pasta meal it
was an easy decision to prepare the same sort of food for Ally GIS across the world in Sea ration
kits at one point the company was producing 250 000 cans of pasta each day while you would
ideally heat these cans up prior to eating sometimes just getting the food inside you is
more important on the battlefield and boyardee's pasta wasn't that bad served cold either my pasta
never gets cold for his role in supplying troops with these rations throughout the second world war
he was awarded the gold star of excellence from the United States war department he almost went
bankrupt after World War II you declare bankruptcy all your problems go away while preparing millions
of meals for hundreds of thousands of soldiers was an honor for Chef Boyardee it didn't do much for
his bottom line and that meant he had to make some money when the war ended unfortunately
he made investments in steel companies at a time when the U.S government was overseen and
regulating these industries quite strictly making it hard to turn a profit it also didn't help that
because the Boyardee line of products continued to grow it wasn't easy to expand at the same
rate there were also some internal struggles over the power and direction of the company involving
both family members and initial investors becoming frustrated with the responsibility and getting a
bit older Boyardee decided to sell his company to American Home foods for nearly 6 million dollars
or 73 million in today's dollars which is not too shabby he loved being a real life mascot this
I love this in the 1950s and 1960s seeing a friendly middle-aged Italian man with a
lingering accent X stole the virtues of pasta in a can on your television during a soap opera was a
completely normal sight Boyardee didn't completely cut ties with the company that held his namesake
and was still consulted when it came to creating and giving options on new products but the
entrepreneurial Spirit he had when climbing the ranks of the plaza hotel's kitchen and starting
his own restaurant translated well to talking about his craft in front of the camera he realized
early on that he had become the representative of Italian food in American kitchens with the
company becoming more and more successful in each passing year this Drew comparisons to another icon
in the food industry that sold his company which became an Empire Colonel Sanders he appeared in
a few ads for Kentucky Fried Chicken around the same time before spilling the tea and complaining
how the quality had plummeted from when he was in charge this is a bad piece of chicken the colonel
was quietly retired after that meanwhile Boyardee was still going strong into the late 1970s by the
time he passed away in 1985 his face was iconic in every grocery store and the Boyardee line was
worth half a billion dollars there's always a commitment to Quality I go for quality over
quantity it's no surprise that canned food which is heated almost exclusively in a microwave gets
a bad rap but that Appliance was still decades away when Boyardee started selling his sauce in
the late 1920s the challenge for him was to scale up going from operating a single restaurant to a
factory all because so many patrons were clamoring for a chance to have a home version of his meals
to make sure this was possible he moved his entire business from Cleveland to the small
town of Milton in eastern Pennsylvania because he could better oversee the growth of tomatoes and
mushrooms in nearby Farms if he was satisfied with the farmer's own commitment to Quality he
would make plans to buy the Harvest outright so that level of quality could be added to his own
products at one point mushrooms were grown on the grounds of the factory itself the continued
success of the company meant it was using 20 000 tons of tomatoes every year and at one point was
the largest American importer of Parmesan cheese and olive oil from Italy that's huge so huge
this focus on what went into the can in the early days and what could be heated up in a pot on a
stove before microwaves is why the name preserved throughout the decades even as the attitudes
towards the food Changed by making meals easy people might not have thought it as impressive
as a dinner that took a long time to prepare but that was part of its appeal you didn't need a lot
of time to enjoy over-stuffed Italian sausage ravioli today to continue the tradition there
are no artificial flavors no preservatives and no artificial colors in any Chef Boyardee products
before the can there was the Kit did you say you're a best cook that's it
while canning the pasta and sauce eventually became the most affordable and efficient Choice
once the Boyardee company got bigger throughout the 1930s and Beyond initially everything was
kept separate there was a box of dry spaghetti that would have to be cooked in a pot over a
stove a glass jar of pasta sauce that would be added once the pasta was cooked as well
as a small container of already grated Parmesan cheese yes the company that everyone Associates
with quick and cheap pasta started out offering do-it-yourself meal kits that are all the rage
these days DIY do-it-yourself of course there were still some Kinks to work out as the pasta box
sauce jar and cheese container were held together thanks to a lot of plastic wrap eventually they
were sensibly placed in a larger more manageable box for shipping and storing and unlike the price
of meal kits today the advertisements back then trumpeted how it cost only pennies per serving
which might make it quarters today thanks to inflation but that's still a great deal
Beefaroni has always gone viral Beefaroni and the show how do you turn that down while Chef Boyardee
is synonymous with pasta in a can the hilarious term Beefaroni obviously combining beef macaroni
and tomato sauce has a longer history than simply being printed on the label right below the chef's
smiling face but if you did want to Tinker you have plenty of options to mix it up to your
heart and stomach's content what was once known mainly as goulash in Eastern Europe is now called
beeperoni in America goulash absolute goulash in 1914 the year Hector Boyardee arrived in America a
book titled the women's educational Club cookbook was published and included a recipe for goulash
which included stewed beef Tomatoes Tabasco sauce and other spices at this point it had more in
common with its Hungarian origin but swapping out certain items changed matters completely
around the time that boyardee's canned pasta was becoming more and more of a staple in American
kitchen cupboards the ingredients became slightly more standard to what we all know and love today
the company released a pizza over his dead body the smell of fresh cooked pizza for
conic food that food thumbs out of Italy Boyardee and the pig cross path
Africa open in New York City in 1905 a decade before Boyardee arrived the dish didn't become
a staple for many decades to come during that time the Boyardee empire grew but because it focused on
prepared foods there was simply no place for pizza if you wanted the Italian pie you almost certainly
had to go out to dinner at a real Pizzeria to get a taste Pizza where's Pizza it wasn't until the
1950s and 60s that pizza delivery meant the meal could arrive at your kitchen table only
years after the chef's death did the company begin to offer a pizza making kit focused on marketing
towards kids the fact that it was described as a kit was a nice nostalgic nod to the initial
pasta kits from the 1930s but the difference was that while the older versions had everything you
needed for your meal the pizza kids only provided the dough and the sauce and the customer has to
provide all the other toppings so the sauce May taste familiar but is this really a Chef
Boyardee pizza the products can Flex with Changing Times I'm you know flexible canning food seems so
inexpensive and old-fashioned that it's easy to forget that when it was introduced in the 1800s
it was considered a product of the wealthy 100 years later it was affordable enough for everyone
as long as you had a can opener Boyardee realized that putting the entire meal in a can would speed
up the cooking and preparing process and made sure that the pasta sauce and meat would store safely
and remain delicious until it was time to heat and serve microwaves meant that you could do all this
even quicker So eventually the company introduced microwavable cups so you didn't even have to pour
the contents of the can into a container that wouldn't explode in the popular Appliance now
owned by ConAgra Brands there's a commitment to sustainability by reducing greenhouse gas
emissions at their factories reducing the amount of plastic packaging being used and partnering
with farmers and ranchers devoted to climate smart agricultural practices that's polluting
at the same time they continue to honor boyardee's Legacy by still
operating the Chef Boyardee Factory in Milton Pennsylvania which he built all those years ago
discontinued boy Rd products are a perfect Nostalgia hit the last ride into a nostalgic past
since these products have always been sold as family-friendly meals marketers knew
that appealing to the youngest members of the family would make a big impact when they were
accompanying their parents to the grocery store that's why Chef Boyardee commercials were on at
all times of the day because if they make kids want it while watching their cartoons they'll
still likely want it at dinner time and there's no better way to sweeten the pot than by Plastering
a familiar character or logo on the label right beside the smiling Italian chef there's Smurfs
pasta shapes Ninja Turtle pasta shapes Justice League pasta shapes Spider-Man pasta shapes and
SpongeBob pasta shapes even more amusing are the products that were discontinued for a clear
lack of sales success but you have to admire the attempt chicken jalapeno Alfredo just seems like
too many flavors in one can but then one could certainly say the same thing about chili cheese
dog twisteroni while health conscious options friends are always appreciated it's not really
what people think of when it comes to canned pasta which is probably why whole grain Beefaroni
and 99 fat-free cheese ravioli just gathered dust on store shelves looking for more Babble
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