If you were a kid in America in the 1950s, your first exposure to Chinese food likely was a Chun King concoction in a can — chop suey or chow mein bought at the grocery store, heated at home and topped with dry Chun King noodles from another can. The Chun King line was founded in the 1940s by Jeno Paulucci, a son of poor Italian immigrants who became a multimillionaire and a major job creator due to his innovations in packaged ethnic foods.

Paulucci's father was a miner. His mother ran a grocery out of the family home, and later, an illegal bar during Prohibition. At 16, Paulucci started in the food business as a fruit vendor, followed by time as a traveling garlic hawker, and then as a home cultivator and distributor of bean sprouts to restaurants. Paulucci saw a lot of Chinese restaurants on his sales routes and no prepared Asian dishes in the grocery stores. “The food industry was missing the boat,” he once said, “allowing restaurants to handle all the take-home business.”