Chef Boyardee - The Man Behind the Can

today's video is sponsored by surf shark alert they provide a service that helps keep you safe on the internet by monitoring your accounts for a limited time if you go to surfshark.deals companyman alert you can save 75 off a one-year plan and if you use the code company man alert you'll get an extra three months for free [Music] i'm not embarrassed to admit that i used to eat a lot of chef boyardee if i remember right around the year 2000 maybe they started selling a larger more extreme version of everything big beefaroni jumbo spaghetti and meatballs overstuffed ravioli and i'll tell you nine year old me was sold by it i couldn't go back to the original either i actually recall being in the store looking at a can of the regular-sized spaghetti and meatballs and wondering who would possibly buy this when the jumbo one is right there they even promoted it with all these commercials featuring professional wrestlers i can confidently say that these were my peak chef boy rd years and then i do recall it tasting progressively worse as i got older i must have thought that they were losing their touch or something but now that i look back on it it was probably on me it's intended for kids more than anything else and i must have grown out of it in all honesty i'd say that was a good thing since i brought up their commercials i want to mention one that sticks in my head i don't know if you remember this but this girl tries to put a can of it in the cart and her mom says no because she's had chef every night this week so they leave without it but the can falls off of the shelf and rolls out of the store down the street and all the way to their house it even stops at a red light i don't know it just makes me happy to talk about it maybe that's the case for you too the real reason that i wanted to make this video is because i don't think chef boyardee gets enough respect not the brand necessarily i'm talking about the person the guy that you see on the label was an actual chef hector boyarty i know the spelling is different but trust me it's him he's the one who started the company based on his recipes and he actually ran it for almost 20 years i would say that this is one of the most impressive and commendable business stories out there yet in many people's minds he's seen as nothing more than a mascot for a children's food product he gets lumped in with betty crocker or mrs butterworts who aren't even real by the way and i don't think it's right look at me now getting so passionate about chef boyardee but you know i'm standing by this one i'm here to spread the word about chef boyardee and the company he created and maybe when i'm done you'll feel the same way we all associate the brand with what i would describe as these low-quality cans of pre-made pasta i'll admit it's not the best legacy especially considering he was actually a highly regarded professional chef he started at a ridiculously young age too he was born in italy in the late 1800s and when he was 11 years old he started a job as an apprentice chef at a hotel in his hometown when he was 16 his family immigrated to the united states through ellis island in new york where he quickly found a job in the kitchen of the famous plaza hotel now i have trouble believing this part but apparently after working there for only a year when he was 17 years old he became their new head chef i suppose he did have six years of culinary experience under his belt but a 17 year old running the kitchen of the plaza i don't know but it does seem to be the popular story that has been confirmed by the company themselves it's not the end of it either that same year in 1915 president woodrow wilson was getting married it was a second marriage since his first wife had died about a year earlier well the person put in charge of catering that wedding was none other than a young chef boyarty he must have done a good job too because it was the first of multiple catering events for the president just to summarize by his 18th birthday chef boyardee as an immigrant was the head chef at a prestigious new york hotel while catering events for the president on the side actually do you know the famous mustache that he has on the logo it's believed that he first grew it around this time as an attempt to make him look older by 1924 when he was 27 years old he chose to follow his dream by moving from new york to cleveland where he opened his own restaurant it was called this which translates to the garden of italy i have to point out how it was a bold move opening an authentic italian restaurant like this in cleveland at this time considering italian food was nowhere near as popular as it is today but the people were receptive to the idea and let's face it he was making tasty food so in a way he created his own market and the restaurant was a success so much so that the customers were always asking him for his recipes obviously they wanted to try to replicate his dishes at home so chef boyardee had the idea of taking it a step further he would not only sell the recipe but the ingredients to go along with it sort of a very early version of a blue apron type service he would package together some pre-made sauce grated cheese and uncooked spaghetti and when he started doing this it was really just a low effort side business kind of thing the tomato sauce would come in a glass milk bottle but the customers did appreciate it and over the next few years the demand grew while his operation became more professional by 1928 the sales of these dinner kits started to surpass the sales of the restaurant and he started to see where the real opportunity was that year he moved his operations to a legitimate factory so he can increase production and along with his brothers mario and paul started focusing on it full time when he did all of this he was still selling it under his actual name with the italian spelling but noticing an issue with brand awareness simply put americans were having trouble pronouncing it and as a small business owner and i think you'll agree it's a huge plus if your customers can actually pronounce and recognize your name to solve the issue he made what i would consider to be a sacrifice by removing the correct spelling from the brand and replacing it with a more americanized spelling often times they would actually space out the syllables so there was no mistake i mean how could you possibly mispronounce this in his own words everyone is proud of his own family name but sacrifices were necessary for progress as it turns out 1928 was just about the perfect time to start this type of business because it was only one year before the start of the great depression as you can imagine an affordable convenient meal like this was very much appreciated during those times after 10 years he moved his business from cleveland to the much smaller town of milton pennsylvania the reason behind the move was because he considered milton pennsylvania to be the perfect place to grow tomatoes for his sauce the weather and the soil was good and plus it was located right along the river many of the farmers around the area started growing tomatoes for him and it actually helped the local economy by the 1940s things were going very well unlike most others they were actually helped by the great depression they had a recognizable name he was using what were likely better ingredients so as a result they were now known by many americans and had grown to a respectable size everything changed for them in 1942. see world war ii was getting pretty messy and the us government commissioned chef boyardee to produce food for the army these canned pasta dishes were perfect for that purpose so now the demand for them was practically endless in his best attempt to keep up with it he kept the production running non-stop it was literally 24 hours a day seven days a week for years at their peak they were putting out 250 000 cans per day once the war was over in 1946 he was recognized for his contribution to the war effort with the gold star which seems to be one of the highest honors that a civilian can receive it's amazing but there was an issue here as i said for the last few years chef boyarty had experienced almost unlimited demand for his products because the government was buying them for the soldiers well now that the war was over their biggest customer was gone and the company was thrown back into the free market and forced to compete they simply could not maintain their sales from before and logically had to slow down production they had 5 000 employees and downsizing it meant that a good portion of them would be laid off chef boyardee really did not like that idea so he found an alternative in 1946 he sold the company to american home foods in exchange for 6 million dollars by selling the company that he had built to a larger company with more resources all of those 5 000 people were able to keep their jobs so in reality he has not been the owner or in control of the brand with his name on it since 1946 but he did remain involved with the company all the way until 1978. he served as an advisor and appeared in their commercials he was actually making these commercials until he was 80 years old after that he lived another seven years until he died in 1985. in the beginning of this video i argued that this man does not get enough respect and i'm hoping at this point you're starting to agree with me but just to drive the point home let me go back and highlight some of the reasons that i think he should be respected for one and it sounds funny considering what the brand has become but i'd say that he qualifies as a culinary master now of course i can't personally vouch for his cooking skills he was alive before my time but just look at the facts working in a kitchen by age 11 head chef by 17 in his own successful restaurant by 27 he was one of the original celebrity chefs here's one that's easy to overlook but what about the fact that he pursued his dreams quitting a desirable job to start his own restaurant and then moving away from that to focus on a new business where he saw even greater potential in addition he relocated his plan to improve his product and help give jobs to small town farmers the gold star of course would be the obvious one even the government recognized his contribution in feeding the soldiers as part of the war effort an act that ultimately ended up hurting him because he later chose to sell the company so his employees can keep their jobs oh yeah and the one that personally impacts me the most without him there would be no overstuffed ravioli i know that's an alternative timeline that i don't want any part of now i'm sure that you can pull more reasons out of this but i feel like it's a pretty solid list especially for a person that many of you thought was a fictional mascot 10 minutes ago to finish up with the brand the company that he sold it to american home foods held on to it until the year 2000 when they sold it to conagra it was a large deal where conagra bought that entire segment that had been renamed international home foods they received chef boyardee of course along with bumblebee tuna pam cooking spray and a few others in exchange for 1.6 billion dollars and assumption of their debt and that's where they've been ever since just looking through some of their more recent reports there's been a few impairment charges related to the brand meaning they're writing down the value of it because it's becoming less valuable they've totaled to almost 200 million dollars since 2014 which is not a great sign but i also wouldn't be expecting them to go away anytime soon let me know in the comments do you remember that rolling can commercial because i swear they used to play that thing all the time but more importantly do you think a little more highly of the actual chef boyardee i just don't like it how so many people think of him in the same way as tony the tiger because i hope we can all agree at this point he's much more than just the face on the can so any thoughts you have about chef boyardee or boyardee the man or the brand or the overstuffed ravioli or any of the other food topics leave them in the comments i'd like to hear what you have to say today's sponsor is servsharkalert and look whether you like it or not well i'm sure you don't like it but data breaches are happening all the time i've talked about companies that were affected by them in my videos before just a few months ago ticketmaster was given a large fine stemming back to this 2018 cyber attack where their customer payment details were obtained leading to 60 000 fraud victims thankfully i've yet to be a victim of something like this and i am not planning on it either because i'm using surf surfshark alert to help protect me by monitoring my accounts i have the setup where i'll receive an alert anytime my email address appears in leaked online databases you can use 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Channel: Company Man

Views: 367,863

Rating: 4.9628296 out of 5

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Id: n4BSyc7ZLiE

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/loztriforce]

Bought some ravioli and they don't make it like they used to, watery soupy shit