Chef Boyardee was an American ‘food hero’

Chef Boyardee was a real guy. He was born as Ettore Boiardi in Italy in 1897 and came to the United States as a teenager in 1914 to live and breathe the “American dream.”

Ettore’s hometown was Borgonovo Val Tidone, near Piacenza, in northwest Italy (in the top of the boot). He began working as an apprentice chef in a local restaurant there at age 11 – learning how to peel potatoes…and tend to the trash.

After arriving at Ellis Island in New York City, Boiardi Anglicized his first name to “Hector” and worked in a succession of upscale Manhattan restaurants. He followed his older brother Paul to the kitchen of the Plaza Hotel in New York City, working his way up to head chef.

Chef Hector Boiardi earned a reputation for excellence. In fact, he was tapped to supervise preparations of the “homecoming meal” hosted in 1918 by President Woodrow Wilson at the White House to honor 2,000 returning World War I soldiers.

Hector Boiardi relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, and became head chef at the Hotel Winton. His tenure there lasted until 1924, when he left to establish his own restaurant in Cleveland, Il Giardino d’Italia (The Garden of Italy).

Patrons asked to purchase his pasta sauce so they could serve it at home, and Hector Boiardi obliged, filling up empty glass milk bottles. 

In 1927, he met and collaborated with two of his restaurant regulars, Maurice and Eva Weiner, owners of a chain of self-service grocery stores. The Weiners showed him how to make his food products on a larger scale.

In 1928, Hector Boiardi began producing a complete spaghetti meal kit, including a canister of grated Parmesan cheese that was imported from Italy, a box of dry spaghetti and a jar of sauce. Homemakers loved its convenience.

 

An early customer was A&P, the national supermarket chain. It was during this time that the “Chef Boy-Ar-Dee” brand evolved, so that consumers could more easily pronounce the Italian name. (Later it was compressed to Chef Boyardee).

 

In 1938, the Boiardi brothers (shown below from left are Paul, Hector and Mario) moved their company operations into a vacant textile mill in Milton, Pa., in the Susquehanna River Valley. 

Fertile farmland there allowed the Boiardis to raise their own tomatoes and mushrooms, key ingredients in their food products.

 

During World War II, the U.S. military commissioned the Boyardee Company in 1942 to produce army rations, primarily “spaghetti in tomato sauce with meat or meatballs.” The Milton manufacturing plant began round-the-clock operations, seven days a week, preparing a quarter of a million rations on a daily basis.

 

The factory’s workforce ballooned to more than 5,000 people who were engaged in ensuring that American troops overseas could enjoy the “food comforts of home.” The place was teeming with patriotism. 

Banners set the tone. Some read: “Keep ‘em flying!” “Keep ‘em rolling!” and “ Keep ‘em well-fed!” 

Hector Boiardi received the Gold Star Order of Excellence from the U.S. War Department in 1946, in honor of his company’s immense contributions to the war effort.

In order to avoid post-war layoffs and recognizing that the operation had reached a scale beyond what the brothers could manage on their own, the Boiardis sold the company to American Home Foods later in 1946 for nearly $6 million.

Hector Boiardi would remain on as a brand consultant for the next 32 years, appearing in many print advertisements and television commercials.

Hector Boiardi died in 1985 at age 87, but his smiling face remains the image of the Chef Boyardee brand. 

Today, the product lineup includes Ravioli, Beefaroni, Lasagna and other pasta-related dishes.

Campbell’s N.C. workforce buoyed by Lance acquisition

When Campbell’s Soup of Camden, N.J., acquired Snyder’s-Lance, Inc. of Charlotte, N.C., in 2018, food industry writers found joy in reporting that Campbell’s now was now fully engaged in making products ranging “from soup to nuts.”

 

Today, Campbell’s continues its commitment to the Charlotte region, employing about 1,400 people in Mecklenburg County across its local Snacks Division network, which includes two Lance crackers, nuts and snacks plants as well as distribution and warehousing facilities located in Charlotte and Pineville.

Additionally, about 150 Campbell corporate employees who handle various supply chain and support roles are based in Charlotte.

(Campbell’s Mecklenburg County workforce is complemented by 1,250 employees assigned to the company’s enormous 2.2-million-square-foot Maxton plant in Robeson County, N.C., that makes soups and broths and drink products for the Meals & Beverages Division.)

Writing for NCPedia, historian Alex Coffin said Lance started in 1912 when Philip L. Lance, a Charlotte coffee salesman, purchased 500 pounds of Virginia peanuts for a customer who subsequently decided he could not use them.

“Reluctant to return the peanuts to the farmer, Lance took them home, roasted them, and sold them for a nickel a bag,” Coffin said.

 

People loved Phil Lance’s peanuts. He formed Lance Packing Company. The family-based peanut-roasting business was off and running. 

Next, they tried peanut butter, spreading it on crackers – the first commercially sold peanut butter cracker.

Other products followed, including the famous ToastChee and NipChee varieties. Packages contained six square snack crackers, wrapped in cellophane. 

Each packet was 5.3 inches long, 1.8 inches wide and 1.8 inches tall, which conveniently fit in trouser pockets.

An amusing radio advertising campaign capitalized on the package size. “I’ve got Lance in my pants!” boosted awareness…and sales.

 

In 2010, Lance, Inc., and Snyder’s of Hanover, Inc., of Hanover, Pa., a global leader in pretzels and other salty treats, joined forces. 

The two companies merged to form Snyder’s-Lance, Inc. Eight years later in 2018, Campbell’s paid $6.1 billion to purchase Snyder’s-Lance.

Southern writers speculated whether the New Jersey-based Campbell’s executives had any inkling that they were buying a “bunch of Nabs” as part of the deal?

As everyone in these parts knows, “Nabs” is a Southern term. It originated in 1924, when the National Biscuit Company, commonly known as Nabisco, came out with its own version of a sealed packet of peanut crackers.

 

The route drivers who delivered the snack packs to soda fountains, factory lunchrooms, gas stations and corner groceries shortened the product name to just “Nabs.” 

The name stuck with Southerners, and the term is used generically to describe any type of snack crackers.

Nabisco had great success with its cookie-style products, including Fig Newtons, Nabisco Wafers, Barnum’s Animal Crackers, Cameos, Lorna Doones and Oreos. 

Nabisco seemed content with the performance of its headliners and eventually abandoned its snack cracker packet lines in the 1970s or thereabouts.

This opened the door for Lance to dominate the market.

 

Food writer Kim Holloway said: “Nabs are what you eat when you’re kind of hungry, but not enough to eat an actual meal. Or if you ARE hungry enough to eat an actual meal, but the meal you’re fixin’ to eat isn’t fixed yet.”

Dr. Tom Allen, a minister at First Baptist Church in Southern Pines, N.C., agrees that Nabs are the Southern go-to snack. 

He says: “Throw a pack into a kid’s bookbag. Toss one to a hunting buddy. Nabs travel well in a golf cart.”

An article by Michael Graff in Our State magazine claimed “the ToastChee brand of Lance crackers, in particular, is a part of the Carolinas’ culture. The Lance ToastChee is ours.”

Campbell’s maintains a large presence in North Carolina

North Carolina is an important state for The Campbell’s Company of Camden, N.J., one of the leading U.S. food and beverage manufacturing companies. Its annual revenues exceed $10.25 billion.

In 1978, Campbell’s announced that it would construct a massive soup manufacturing plant in Robeson County near Maxton.

 

The story has historical significance. The Campbell’s factory was built on a 670-acre site that was once part of Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air Base.

 

According to NCPedia, the military post was a vital installation during World War II for developing airborne operations and training glider pilots to fly the CG-4A, the most widely used American military troop and cargo glider of the war. The base was active from 1942-45. At its peak, 10,000 soldiers were stationed here.

 

Army Maj. Gen. William C. Lee, who was known as the “Father of the Airborne” for his leadership in organizing Army airborne units, was responsible for construction of the base in his home state. (He was a native of Dunn, N.C., in Harnett County.)

 

During World War II, glider units operated with paratroop, infantry, artillery, engineer and medical units. Each glider could carry 13 soldiers and their equipment. Pilots who were trained at Laurinburg-Maxton participated in the invasions of Sicily and Italy in mid-1943 and in the airborne landings on June 6, 1944, in Normandy, France.

The primary airplanes used to tow the gliders at Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air Base during World War II were the Douglas C-47 Skytrain (shown above) and the Curtiss C-46 Commando (shown below).

  

The Laurinburg-Maxton base was deactivated in October 1945. The towns of Laurinburg (in Scotland County) and Maxton took over management of the airfield, which continues to operate two runways to serve general aviation customers.

The rest of the former air base was ripe for economic development – with plenty of flat land, rail infrastructure and easy access to major highways. Additionally, the site offered abundant underground water tables and direct access to the Lumber River, vital for the high-volume water needs of a soup and broth plant.

Campbell’s benefited from state and local incentives, customized training programs and a dedicated, skilled workforce.

The $100 million project to build the sprawling 1.2 million-square-foot facility, known as Campbell’s Maxton plant, created about 1,000 new jobs. The first can of soup in Maxton was produced on June 8, 1982.

Interestingly, there is only one community in the entire United States named Maxton, and Campbell’s has put it on the world map.

Maxton’s historic Town Hall, once serving as a bank and later a laundry, was meticulously renovated in 1997 to house municipal offices.

The first European settlers came to this area from Scotland in the 1700s. A community formed at Shoe Hill Creek and the Lumber River and was incorporated in 1874 as Shoe Hill. 

It was later named Quhele (pronounced as “Kwayl”…rhymes with “jail”), in honor of a Highland Scottish clan.

That didn’t last long. The name of the village was changed back to Shoe Hill in 1881 and finally named Maxton in 1887. Maxton was chosen to honor the immigrants who came from the Scottish Borders region of southeastern Scotland. 

The lands and barony of Maxton lie in the County of Roxburghshire on the northern banks of the famed River Tweed.

 

Campbell’s and Maxton were in the news just recently, as the company dedicated a major addition to the Maxton plant in mid-June 2026.

The expansion project added 88,000 square feet of manufacturing space with another 28,000 square feet of utility mezzanine space, while creating about 100 jobs. 

This will boost the Maxton plant employee group to about 1,250 people who are working at the 2.2 million-square-foot facility.

The facility makes products that carry the Swanson, Pacific Foods, Campbell’s, Campbell’s Chunky, Campbell’s Homestyle and SpaghettiO’s labels.

 

Brothers Jason and Travis Kelce have been brand ambassadors who have appeared in television commercials for Chunky Soup.

The Maxton plant produces roughly 8.2 million cans/cartons per day. This is 110 to 115 truckloads per day, or a truckload every 12 minutes.

Campbell’s Soup diversifies through acquisitions

Early acquisitions by Campbell’s Soup of Camden, N.J., have had dramatically different outcomes.

First, in 1915, the company purchased Franco-American Food Company, which was established in 1886 in Jersey City, N.J., by Alphonse Biardot. He had immigrated to the United States from France in 1880. At the time, Franco-American’s primary products were French soups and assorted gravies.

 

Franco-American had a loyal following of consumers who enjoyed canned products like Spaghetti and Meat Balls, SpaghettiOs, RavioliOs and Macaroni and Cheese, but in 2004, Campbell’s decided “to retire” the Franco-American brand. 

It folded SpaghettiOs and the gravies under the Campbell’s umbrella. Macaroni and Cheese was unceremoniously dropped from the lineup.

 

The primary celebrity spokesperson for the Franco-American brand in the late 1950s was actress June Lockhart, who promoted Macaroni and Cheese in television commercials.

 

Jimmie Rodgers, the pop singer known for “Honeycomb,” originally sang the famous “Uh-Oh! SpaghettiOs” jingle when the canned pasta rings were introduced in 1965. 

He adapted the tune from his recording of “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again” (1958). The jingle went: “The neat round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon...Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs!”

Singer/songwriter Barry Manilow wrote a number of top-flight advertising jingles, including “Who Can? Franco Ameri-Can” in 1974 for Franco-American Spaghetti with Meatballs. It concludes: “Spaghetti that’s long on fun, to the last one – Franco-Ameri-Can!”

 

Campbell Soup’s second acquisition saw the company purchase the V8 Vegetable Juice brand in 1948. 

The deal included V8’s manufacturing facility in Napoleon, Ohio (about 45 miles southwest of Toledo).

 

The beverage was first concocted during the Great Depression (1933) by entrepreneur William Gilbert Peacock in the basement of his home in Evanston, Ill. Peacock was hoping to invent an affordable and healthy drink that would provide people with essential nutrients from an assortment of hand-blended vegetable juices.

The story is reported by Dr. Neil Gale, editor of The Digital Research Library of Illinois. 

He said Peacock brought in Frank Constable of Chicago to help him arrive at the proper formula. Tomato juice originally accounted for about 87% of the content, but seven other vegetables were also included in the mix.

They were beets, carrots, celery, lettuce, parsley, spinach and watercress, along with spices, such as dill. The precise formula remains a carefully guarded secret.

 

The name V8 was selected by Peacock and Constable to align the product with the power of a V8 automotive engine…to get your motor running.

 

Since 1948, Campbell’s has invested heavily in the V8 product line. Some of the entertainment industry heavyweights who pitched V8 products were: Ann Sheridan, Shirley Temple, Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Lamour, Rhonda Fleming and Ronald Reagan.

 

Today, Campbell’s Napolean, Ohio, manufacturing facility, with more than 2 million square feet of floor space, produces way more than just V8 – it accounts for more than one-third of all Campbell’s soups and other products in the company’s “meals group” and two-thirds of all its “beverages.”

A giant replica of a red and white Campbell’s Tomato Soup can is situated outside the plant. It stands 33 feet tall and contains 200,000 gallons of water for the warehouse sprinkler system.

 

Local officials say it would take 2,178,645 regular-sized cans (10.75 ounces) of Campbell’s Tomato Soup to fill the tank.

The site also contains a massive 23,040-panel solar field, a city-sized wastewater treatment plant and a biodigestor that converts fruit and vegetable waste into methane gas to fuel the plant’s generators.

 

Campbell’s employs about 1,300 people at its Napoleon plant, making the company, by far, the largest employer in the region. (Napoleon’s population is 8.635.)

The community was settled along the Maumee River in 1832 and is named after French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.