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Vincent Gruppuso, 67, Seller of Pudding Snacks

Vincent Gruppuso, the founder of Kozy Shack Enterprises, a company in Hicksville, Long Island, that sells millions of four-ounce cups of pudding, particularly rice pudding, at supermarkets in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe, died Dec. 29 at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 67.

The cause was complications of diabetes, said his son-in-law Michael Caridi.

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Jean-Claude Vrinat, Owner of Famed Paris Restaurant

Jean-Claude Vrinat, for more than three decades the owner and director of the Taillevent restaurant in Paris, which is regarded by many as the pinnacle of elegance in French cuisine, died Monday. He was 71.

Under Mr. Vrinat, Taillevent became a gastronomic benchmark by which other great Parisian restaurants are judged.

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Viktor Schreckengost, a celebrated industrial designer whose products included mass-produced dinnerware

In the 1930s, Viktor took up the cause of making the American homemaking job not only easier, but more pleasant by creating dishes that fit modern tastes and lifestyles.

The dinnerware shapes and treatments that Schreckengost devised for several American manufacturers are among the most innovative designs in the history of American dinnerware.

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Bill Jackson, 54, Chef, Restaurant Executive

[unable to post stable link; excerpt below]

Bill Jackson, 54, a chef praised for his Modern American cuisine and a partner in a prominent local restaurant group, died March 1 at his home in Churchton.

Since 2000, Mr. Jackson had been a corporate executive chef and partner with Great American Restaurants, which owns Carlyle, Sweetwater Tavern, Coastal Flats, Artie's, Silverado, Mike's "American" and Best Buns Bread Co. He formerly spent 12 years as executive chef and managing partner at Best Buns and Carlyle, long known as Carlyle Grand Cafe in Arlington's Shirlington Village.

In 1994, Washingtonian magazine called Mr. Jackson "the person mainly responsible for [Carlyle's] reputation as a wonderful place to eat," with a menu based on the fundamentals of French cooking but with Asian influences.

The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington named him chef of the year in 1995. He was a 1976 honors graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. Afterward, he was hired by chefs Pano Karatassos and Paul Albrecht to work at their resort, the Lodge of Four Seasons, at Lake of the Ozarks, Mo. He later spent nine years as chef at their highly rated fine-dining restaurant, Pano's & Paul's, in Atlanta.

Great American Restaurants is scheduled to open a Reston restaurant this fall in Mr. Jackson's honor, Jackson's Mighty Fine Food and Lucky Lounge.

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Al Copeland, 64; founder of Popeyes Chicken

Al Copeland, who became rich selling spicy fried chicken and notorious for his flamboyant lifestyle, died Sunday at a clinic near Munich, Germany.

Inspired by the success of a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in New Orleans, Copeland in the early 1970s [… opened] a restaurant, Chicken on the Run. ("So fast you get your chicken before you get your change.")

After six months, Chicken on the Run was still losing money. In a last-ditch effort, Copeland chose a spicier Louisiana Cajun-style recipe and reopened the restaurant under the name Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken, after Popeye Doyle, Gene Hackman's character in the film "The French Connection." The chain that grew from that one restaurant became Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken.

Also see the BayouBuzz.com obit.

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Geri Cook, 83; shopper made a career of bargain-hunting

Geri Cook wrote the "Bargains" column for The [LA] Times. In it she directed readers to [...] restaurants with "happy hours" that include free hors d'oeuvres and coffee bean shops where the price goes down the more you buy.

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Lucy Appleby, 88; cheese-maker who fought pasteurisation

Lucy Appleby was one of the most accomplished cheese-makers of her generation and took a bold and ultimately successful stand against attempts to have unpasteurised cheese-making banned in Britain

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Huntington Hartford, 97; Heir of a principal founder of the Great Atlantic & Pacific [A&P] Tea Company which provided him with a living of about $1.5 million a year.

What did he do with that $1.5 million a year? Click.

The article made one slight error. He didn't sell out to Resorts International. He brought in Jim Crosby and Jack Davis of the Mary Carter Paint Company as partners, and they gradually bought him out piecemeal. They subsequently renamed the whole thing Resorts International, got the necessary gambling license, and made big bucks. Later RI was one of the first, if not the first, operators in Atlantic City. I once did a consulting job for them (how to better supply foods to the Bahamas operation, which relied on old DC-6 freighter flights from Miami carrying prime meats and such that were not otherwise available in Nassau). When I went to their HQ in Atlantic City to make the final presentation, I made it a point afterwards to get over to the White House to have one of their legendary sandwiches. I couldn't finish it, so I wrapped it up and took it along home on the little plane that I had to fly between DC and Atlantic City. Unfortunately, I left it on the seat when I deplaned, a lapse I have often thought about and regretted ever since.

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A less J.R. Ewing eulogy would include that he was a resourceful 8th grade drop-out self-made billionaire miser who ran away from home at age 14 buying teachers’ IOU paychecks for 50 cents on the dollar, buying a few hogs with the profits, feeding them wild horse meat and potato scraps, growing potatoes from certified seeds to reduce disease threats, supplying most of the potatoes and dried vegetables to troops in WWII, revolutionizing the potato industry with portable electric potato sorters, wearing the same glasses for 30 years, driving the same car, donating his house to the state as a governor’s mansion and yes, a frozen french fry baron which legend has was by the grace of a coin flip.

"The only thing I did smart, and just remember this - ninety-nine percent of people would have sold out when they got their first twenty-five or thirty million. I didn't sell out. I just hung on."

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A less J.R. Ewing eulogy would include that he was a resourceful 8th grade drop-out self-made billionaire miser who ran away from home at age 14 buying teachers’ IOU paychecks for 50 cents on the dollar, buying a few hogs with the profits, feeding them wild horse meat and potato scraps, growing potatoes from certified seeds to reduce disease threats, supplying most of the potatoes and dried vegetables to troops in WWII, revolutionizing the potato industry with portable electric potato sorters, wearing the same glasses for 30 years, driving the same car, donating his house to the state as a governor’s mansion and yes, a frozen french fry baron which legend has was by the grace of a coin flip.

"The only thing I did smart, and just remember this - ninety-nine percent of people would have sold out when they got their first twenty-five or thirty million. I didn't sell out. I just hung on."

That's right. A good entrepreneur, and an interesting ol' guy. Made his money the old fashioned way--by being smarter than everybody else.

You didn't mention that he shot the horses himself.

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Frank Shattuck II, 89, Who Helped Guide Schrafft’s

Frank G. Shattuck II, the last president of the company that owned Schrafft’s restaurants, a New York City-based chain that for decades offered home-style food in genteel surroundings to secretaries, errand boys, court clerks and others watchful of their wallets.

Also see this 1968 Time article.

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That's right. A good entrepreneur, and an interesting ol' guy. Made his money the old fashioned way--by being smarter than everybody else.

You didn't mention that he shot the horses himself.

From the NY Times obit:

… signed a contract with Ray Kroc to supply fries to Mr. Kroc’s chain. Mr. Simplot promised to build an entire factory just for McDonald’s. The deal was sealed with a handshake.

… shot wild horses, which — after stripping the hides for future sale at $2 each — he mixed with potatoes and cooked on sagebrush-fueled flames. The hogs ate the result. When he sold the fattened pigs, Mr. Simplot made more than $7,000.

… did not fix his car’s brakes because he did not want to spend the money.

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Leo Crespi who was generous with his intellect but not when it came to tipping

In the late 1940s, he proposed the National Anti-Tipping League to champion an end to gratuities. He framed it as a matter of social justice. In his plan, league members would leave a card advising a waiter to ask for a better living wage from his boss rather than expecting diners to make up the difference. Dr. Crespi thought tipping had become a nuisance, an expected social gesture customers base on ego, embarrassment or attempts to please the server.

Rarely, he noted, do diners base the gratuity on the service quality, adding, "Most people do not have the requisite nerve."

If he had ever gone to restaurants, his enduring study of tipping -- cited by the New York Times and more-scholarly works over the decades -- would have been more than an academic point. But Dr. Crespi was alarmingly frugal. He never ate out.

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Basil Rifkind, 73, was one of the principal figures on a 1984 landmark study that provided the first conclusive evidence that lowering blood cholesterol can prevent heart attacks.

And in his honor, I'll have a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and blueberries with heavy cream

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Josephine O'Brien Tavenner, 85, an Olney restaurateur whose establishments included the Silo Inn, Mr. T's Sandwich Factory, the Sea Barn, the Rib Room, Jake's Crab and Rib, Jake's Country Market, Jo Jem's, Silo Inn East, the Kahlua Hut and Jake's Hideaway.

Washington Post restaurant critic Eve Zibart, writing in 1988, described it as one of a number of "family-style relics in the upper Montgomery County environs; driving up there is like taking a '50s-style family vacation in the car, looking for the restaurants with plaster fawns in the front yard and a discreet COLD DRAUGHT sign in the window. The Silo Inn was a neighborhood Sunday supper spot back when the only 'neighborhood' to speak of was Leisure World."

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Sidney Craig, who with his wife Genevieve built the Jenny Craig weight loss program into a multimillion-dollar business based on a philosophy of moderation, with small-portioned meals, a balanced diet and regular physical exercise

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At about midnight Tuesday, managers were told that all of the Bennigan's restaurants nationwide will be closing as of July 29.

RIP

Actually, to be accurate, it was the corporate owned stores only. Some or all of the franchise locations may keep going.

Same company owns Steak and Ale, and those have met a similar fate, if I understand correctly.

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William R. "Obie" O'Brien, 73, a bartender who once co-owned the popular watering hole Tammany Hall

The bar gained a reputation as a favorite hangout of what The Washington Post called "reporters, federal agents, street freaks, students and professional bar stars."

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Isaac Hayes - voice of "Chef" on South Park (in addition to his many contributions to the musical world). :lol:

Theme From Shaft was way ahead of its time. Let's not forget Escape From New York. Popping a Gaston Chicquet in about ten minutes and toasting you with the first glass. Cheers Chef.

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