Vincent DeDomenico, 92, Co-Invented Rice-A-Roni
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Vincent DeDomenico, co-inventor of Rice-A-Roni, whose catchy TV jingle highlighted its origins in San Francisco, died Thursday at his home in Napa, Calif. He was 92.
Along with his brothers, DeDomenico, the son of Italian immigrants, created the packaged side dish of rice and pasta for their San Francisco-based family business. “The San Francisco treat” became known in the 1960s through TV commercials that featured the city’s cable cars.
In the 1930s, the DeDomenico brothers were running their parents’ pasta business in San Francisco’s Mission District. They got to experimenting in a test kitchen with recipes combining long-grain white rice, broken pieces of vermicelli and chicken broth. The dish evolved from a recipe one of their wives had originally gotten from a landlady.
“It was a struggle,” DeDomenico told the San Francisco Chronicle last year. “Times were hard and I knew if we were going to make any money, we were going to have to come up with something else.”
Rice-A-Roni became a national brand in the 1960s. The brothers sold the Golden Grain Macaroni Co. to Quaker Oats in 1986 for $275 million. By then the company also included such products as Ghirardelli Chocolate.
In later years, DeDomenico bought 21 miles of railroad track in Napa Valley and several vintage passenger cars, creating a tourist attraction called the Napa Valley Wine Train.
Born in San Francisco in 1915, one of six children, DeDomenico went to work for his father’s pasta company as a salesman while taking night business classes at Golden Gate College.