When 16-year-old Ettore “Hector” Boiardi arrived at Ellis Island from Italy in 1914, he couldn’t have imagined that his face would one day appear on supermarket shelves across America. After becoming a celebrated chef, he turned his restaurant’s most popular takeout meals into one of the country’s most recognizable food brands, forever changing the way Americans ate Italian food.
During World War II, Chef Boyardee’s factories stopped making food for grocery stores and began producing military rations around the clock, making his company one of the largest suppliers of meals to American and Allied troops. Our own Greg Hengler shares the remarkable story of the real man behind one of America’s most familiar brands.
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Lee Habeeb (00:10):
And we continue here with Our American Stories. And this next story comes from a listener in Los Angeles, Joe Garibotti. And before there was a can, there was this man. Greg Hengler is about to bring us the story of Chef Boyardee, whom Joe told us in his email, putting us on to this great story, that he last saw Chef Boyardee at his own grandmother’s funeral back in Cleveland in the 1960s. Here’s Greg with the story of Chef Boyardee.
Greg Hengler (00:51):
Chef Boyardee is one of the most familiar figures in the supermarket aisles. But you may be surprised to know that the smiling, mustachioed character in the white apron and towering chef’s hat wasn’t some corporate marketing concoction like Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, and Uncle Ben. The man who graces cans of Beefaroni and spaghetti and meatballs, Ettore “Hector” Boiardi, was a real person. And yes, that’s his real picture. Here he is in a 1953 television commercial.
Chef Boyardee (archival commercial) (01:24):
Hello, may I come in? I am Chef Boyardee. Perhaps you have seen my picture on Chef Boyardee products at your grocer’s.
Greg Hengler (01:33):
Born in 1897 in the northern Italian city of Piacenza, Boiardi supposedly used a wire whisk for a rattle and, by the age of 11, was working as an apprentice chef at a local hotel. In 1914, 16-year-old Boiardi set sail for a new life with better opportunities in America and arrived at Ellis Island. He entered the kitchen at New York City’s prestigious Plaza Hotel, where his older brother Paul was a maître d’, and within a year, at just 17 years of age, he assumed the position of head chef. So talented was Boiardi that he directed the catering for the wedding reception of President Woodrow Wilson and his second wife, Edith, that same year.
Greg Hengler (02:17):
Two years later, the chef moved to Cleveland to run the kitchen at the Hotel Winton, and in 1924, Boiardi opened a restaurant of his own with his newlywed wife, Helen. Chef Boyardee’s grandniece is Anna Boiardi. She’s a TV producer and cookware designer who took on the role of family historian when she published Delicious Memories: Recipes and Stories from the Chef Boyardee Family in 2011. Here’s Anna and cookbook author Nathan Myhrvold.
Anna Boiardi (02:56):
My name is Anna Boiardi, B-O-I-A-R-D-I. Chef Boyardee was a real person. The man that you know on the can as Chef Boyardee was my great-uncle.
Nathan Myhrvold (03:08):
Boiardi was a food revolutionary because he made it possible for people that could never have gotten to his restaurant, wouldn’t have cooked a pasta sauce themselves, but they could buy a can of it.
Anna Boiardi (03:21):
The company was actually founded by my grandfather and my two great-uncles. Italian food in the ’20s was not as common as it is today. People were always asking, “Well, how do I make this at home?” And they would give customers some pasta to take home and a little tomato sauce and give them a little cheese and explain how to properly cook the pasta. Everyone thought it was great. And they decided that they were going to start canning their tomato sauce and selling it in supermarkets across America.
Greg Hengler (03:57):
Boiardi recognized this business opportunity when his takeout revenue began to eclipse the dine-in revenue. A couple of the chef’s regular patrons who owned a local grocery store chain helped him design a canning process and find a national distributor. To meet the growing demand, Boiardi and his brothers built a small processing plant and launched the Chef Boiardi Food Company in 1928. The company’s first product was a prepackaged spaghetti dinner in a cardboard carton.
Chef Boyardee (archival commercial) (04:29):
Today I want to tell you about a wonderful dinner for three, a dinner that only costs about 15 cents a serving. It’s my own Chef Boyardee spaghetti dinner with meat sauce or mushroom sauce. It all comes in one carton: a full half-pound of tender, quick-cooking spaghetti, ten full ounces of rich, tasty sauce, and, to top it off, a whole can of zippy grated cheese. A wonderful food.
Greg Hengler (04:54):
The product sold well, but Boiardi soon discovered a problem. His American customers and salesmen struggled with the pronunciation of his last name. So the chef decided to change it to the phonetic “Boyardee.” Boiardi said, “Everyone is proud of his own family name, but sacrifices were necessary for progress.”
Greg Hengler (05:17):
The company’s low-cost but tasty meals became popular during the Depression and helped to make Italian food a mainstay in the United States. But it wasn’t the chef’s sauce that made Boyardee the household name that it is today. We can thank the U.S. military for that. Here’s food historian Jack Turner and Anna Boiardi.
Archival wartime audio (05:40):
We are going to win this war.
Jack Turner (05:42):
World War II was a hugely significant event in the food chain because these ration packs, all of these processed foods, were, if you like, developed to meet a need, to meet a need of armies that were far away that needed to be fed.
Anna Boiardi (05:55):
At the beginning of World War II, Chef Boyardee is granted the commission to produce rations. All of what’s considered civilian production, so that supermarket production, is halted. And the factory is converted to aid in the war effort and is now running 24 hours a day.
Greg Hengler (06:19):
By the end of the war, Chef Boyardee had become the largest supplier of rations to the U.S. and Allied forces. He was awarded the Gold Star Order of Excellence from the United States War Department, one of the highest honors a civilian can receive, in honor of the company’s wartime efforts. But the question was now, without the demand, what were they going to do with their supply, their workforce, and their massive factories? Chef Boyardee made the difficult decision to sell the company in 1946 to the American Home Products conglomerate for nearly $6 million. Here’s food historian Andrew F. Smith and Jack Turner.
Andrew F. Smith (07:02):
Chef Boyardee puts the spaghetti and meatballs together and puts them in a can, puts a picture of it on the outside of this. Here’s this professional saying, “You can serve this in your home,” and it becomes one of the more successful products that are made in America.
Archival audio (07:16):
Chin-chin.
Andrew F. Smith (07:17):
It’s a great story.
Jack Turner (07:18):
After the war, the sort of main argument, if you like, of the food industry was that all you needed to do was open a can. Cooking was for the past.
Greg Hengler (07:29):
Boiardi remained a consultant with the company until 1978 and continued to appear in advertisements. In fact, Boiardi became one of the first celebrity chefs to appear in print advertisements and television commercials. And with no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives in the classic pasta dishes, such as beef ravioli and lasagna, Chef Boyardee is a meal you can serve with the same pride the chef did in World War II.
Chef Boyardee (archival commercial) (07:58):
So ask your grocer for Chef Boyardee’s spaghetti dinner with meat or mushroom sauce, won’t you? And look for other Chef Boyardee products. They’re also delicious, they’re also nourishing, and they help keep the cost of your meals down. Chef Boyardee products are at best grocers. Ask for Chef Boyardee’s spaghetti dinner. Only about 15 cents a serving.
Greg Hengler (08:20):
The chef died of natural causes on June 21, 1985, at the age of 87. Today, Chef Boyardee defines Italian cooking in America, so much so that Italian food hardly registers as ethnic cuisine for most Americans. Ettore Boiardi was a big part of that. And on supermarket shelves around the world, his smiling face lives on.
Lee Habeeb (08:49):
And great job, as always, to Greg Hengler, and thanks to Joe Garibotti. And my goodness, we learned a lot about, well, somebody we didn’t even know actually really existed. And indeed, Chef Boyardee did. A couple of big ones: he changed his name. Really smart. He also helped popularize Italian food. But how he did it was helping our boys, feeding our boys in World War II. He won a Gold Star Order of Excellence for being one of the largest suppliers in the war effort in World War II. Chef Boyardee’s story, here on Our American Stories.
Closing music (09:21):
Cooking, gonna cook us some lunch, yeah, yeah.
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