First it was Chun King, the canned Chinese food that became a mainstay in American cupboards in the postwar decades. Then it was the pizza roll, a hybrid of Italian uggbootssale-aus.comand Chinese fast food that acquired similar status in the kitchen freezer. Jeno Paulucci, a food magnate, had a hand in both of those contributions to the American diet, founding the companies that produced them. He died at 93 on Thursday at his home in Duluth, Minn.
Enlarge This Image
Derek Neas/Duluth News Tribune, via Associated Press
Jeno Paulucci
The cause was renal and coronary failure, his daughter, Gina, said. His wife, the former Lois Mae Trepanier, died on Nov. 20.
Mr. Paulucci was working as a wholesale grocer in Hibbing, Minn., in the late 1940s when he noticed a blossoming market for prepared Chinese food. “The food industry was missing the boat, allowing the restaurants to handle all the take-home business,” Mr. Paulucci told The New York Times in 1955.
So he borrowed $2,500 from a friend and used it to begin canning chow mein and selling it to retailers.
“I seasoned it to my own Italian taste, borrowed space in a vegetable packing house and made up a truckload of it,” Mr. Paulucci said in 1976. “When I’d sold that, I’d come back and make up another truckload until I had a plant in Duluth and a lot of people working for me.”
Chun King came to encompass an entire line of prepared Chinese food.uggs outlet buffalo ugg boots edmonton ugg boots in edmonton In 1957 Mr. Paulucci patented the Divider-Pak, packaging that kept the food separate from its sauce. He sold the company to R. J. Reynolds for $63 million in 1966, and two years later was briefly chairman of that company’s food division. But his restlessness led to different endeavors, this time inspired by his ancestral cuisine.
In 1968 Mr. Paulucci founded Jeno’s Inc., a company that sold frozen pizzas and a variety of snacks. The most notable of these was undoubtedly the pizza roll, a combination single slice and egg roll. His family credits him with inventing it. He sold Jeno’s Inc. to Pillsbury for $135 million in 1985. The next year, Jeno’s Pizza Rolls were rebranded as Totino’s Pizza Rolls.
Luigino Francesco Paulucci was born on July 7, 1918, in Aurora, Minn., to Michelina and Ettore Paulucci, immigrants from Bellisio Solfare, Italy. Ettore came to the United States to work in the iron mines of northeastern Minnesota, but an injury kept him from working and the family was supported by a grocery store that Michelina ran.
Mr. Paulucci entered the grocery business after graduating from Hibbing High School in 1935.
In addition to his daughter he is survived by a son, Michael; another daughter, Cindy Selton; four grandchildren; and many great-grandchildren.
In the early 1990s Mr. Paulucci founded Michelina’s ugg st louis ugg queens ugg fresnoInc., which sold ready-made pasta and Mexican dishes, naming it after his mother. He headed the company at his death.
Despite his success, Mr. Paulucci never forgot his hardscrabble roots. For years he kept the small truck he first used to haul Chinese food, garaging it in a hangar next to his two private jets and two seaplanes.
“It helps my ego to look back,” Mr. Paulucci said. ugg boots texas ugg boots philadelphia ugg boots in texas“I look at those jets, and then I look at that old truck, and I remember to keep running.”
没有评论:
发表评论