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Founded by an Italian immigrant, Chef Boyardee is emblematic of the American Dream. As a teenager, Hector Boiardi left Europe to become a top chef at a luxury New York hotel before going out on his own and eventually creating a nationwide brand. Nearly a century later, the Chef Boyardee brand has gone from a $6 million sale in 1946 to a $600 million deal today, marking a 10,000% increase in value.
You might know Chef Boyardee for being a staple across U.S. grocery store shelves or for rolling to the home of a disappointed young girl in its iconic 2000s TV ad.
Even so, the American brand just made a much bigger move—thanks to its $600 million sale from Fortune 500 company Conagra Brands to Hometown Food Company, a portfolio company of Brynwood Partners, that also owns nostalgic staples like Pillsbury and Hungry Jack.
And while the 100-year-old Chef Boyardee brand may seem simple, as a collection of canned pasta products, its value has grown some 10,000% since it first exchanged hands from the family business. In that time, it’s gone on to stock the shelves of thousands of grocers and have a 500-person strong manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania.
But 110 years ago, its founder, Hector Boiardi, was just a teenage Italian immigrant chasing the American Dream.
In 1915, Boiardi first made a name for himself by becoming a top chef at big-name New York City hotels like the Ritz-Carlton while just 17 years old. Less than a decade later, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he opened his own restaurant, called Il Giardino d’Italia. Soon, his expansion of dine-in and carry-out operations required factory production, and the brand took off nationwide—and even thrived during the Great Depression.
During World War II, the company created field rations for the armed services, and Chef Boyardee exploded to a company with $20 million in annual revenue (over $320 million in today’s money). By 1946, Chef Boy-ar-dee (as it was named then, before pivoting to today’s style, Boyardee) Quality Foods sold to a larger food company for $6 million (about $100 million today). Boiardi remained a company consultant until 1978 and invested in other local restaurants before passing away at 87 years old in 1985. But his legacy, in his namesake brand, lives on.
“We are excited to add the iconic Chef Boyardee brand to the Hometown collection of nostalgic brands that offer a longstanding rich heritage,” wrote Henk Hartong, chairman and CEO of Brynwood Partners (the firm behind Hometown Food Company) in a press release.
