Thank Goodness for Chef Boyardee!
Most food brands have mascots, and most of those mascots are animals or random, made-up people. We’re used to these beloved mascots not being real, but that’s not always the case. Take the chef from the Chef Boyardee can. There is, in fact, a very real person behind the jolly man wearing the chef’s hat on your can of ravioli.
The real Chef Boyardee is Ettore “Hector” Boiardi, who founded the company in 1928 with his brothers. He immigrated from Italy to the United States and enjoyed huge success with the Chef Boyardee food brand. Before Chef Boyardee took off, Hector was a successful chef, and even supervised the catering of Woodrow Wilson’s wedding reception at the ripe old age of seventeen!