The sweet sauce, the soft noodle.

This was childhood.

- [Child] Mmmm!

- [Narrator] But did you know that

Chef Boyardee was an actual chef?

He was, his name was Hector, and he made a mean pasta sauce.

But it wasn't Hector's sauce that made Chef Boyardee

the household name that it is today.

You can thank the U.S. Military for that.

In the 1930s, Hector Boiardi opened up an Italian

restaurant in Ohio and everyone was like,

- [Man] Oh my god, I love your sauce.

- [Narrator] So he started selling it,

and he sold a lot of it.

A lot, a lot.

By 1938, he had opened up his own factory

selling his sauce and pasta can.

- [Man] Ask for Chef Boyardee's spaghetti dinner,

only about 15 cents a serving.

- [Narrator] Then, World War II happened

and a phone call was made.

The U.S. Military called Hector and said something like.

- [Man] Help make food for the troops.

- [Narrator] He already had the canning

infrastructure so Hector said, yeah, alright.

His company shifted from a civilian

consumer base to a military one.

Chef Boyardee became the largest supplier

of rations to U.S. and allied forces.

Production was happening 24/7.

By the end of the war, the factory was too large

and the military demand no longer existed.

Hector didn't know what to do,

so he sold it to this large company called American Home Products

who were all like,

- [Man] We got this.

- [Narrator] They quickly rebranded and distributed

the can as easy to make at-home meals

and filled supermarket shelves across the United States.

So today when we buy Chef Boyardee,

we're actually eating rebranded World War II field rations.

Yup.