'Preferred Over Chef Boyardee': The Classic Canned Pasta Millennials Grew Up Eating

Everyone who grew up eating canned pasta probably recognizes the familiar likeness of canned food celebrity Chef Boyardee. While the brand had a significant role in bringing Italian cuisine into American homes, it wasn't the only player on the market. The Franco-American Food Company was once a worthy competitor to Chef Boyardee, selling similar canned products like spaghetti and meatballs, pasta twists, and beef ravioli. Its Superiore Beef Ravioli and other pastas are remembered by many millennials for the premium taste and tagline "Preferred over Chef Boyardee." While it's not uncommon to see hacks for making Boyardee taste better, this pasta supposedly needed no such thing.

The Franco-American Food Company was created in 1886 by French immigrant Alphonse Biardot and was acquired by The Campbell's Company in 1915. It focused on canned pasta products, while Campbell's was best known for soups. It introduced its blue-label beef ravioli in the 1970s with a marketing angle of "It's not just for kids," targeting parents as well as children.

Franco-American was eventually discontinued as a canned pasta brand in 2004 after Campbell's decided to sell the pastas under its own name for better brand recognition. You might still see the Franco-American name on cans of gravy, but it's no longer a purveyor of the iconic Superiore Beef Ravioli. Even though the brand's pasta has disappeared, many millennials still have vivid memories of eating its pastas as children.

Franco-American touted its Superiore Beef Ravioli as being firmer and more thickly stuffed than Chef Boyardee's offerings, with a red sauce that provided greater depth of flavor. One nostalgic Reddit user wrote, "It was the best ravioli! The ravioli was round and beef was thick and tasty!" Others said the red sauce was delightfully spicy, while some argued that it had too much pepper. Some fans of Franco-American's pastas remember eating them spread on a slice of bread or baked into casseroles.

Another Reddit user said of the overall brand, "Franco American was for people too fancy to eat Chef Boyardee." This perception is perhaps due to the brand's efforts to market to both kids and adults rather than positioning its products solely as after-school meals for kids. The brand's commercials also compared eating its pasta to fine dining. Chef Boyardee eventually won the marketing war and is still around today, but Franco-American filled many plates while it was on shelves. Though the Superiore Beef Ravioli is one of many discontinued canned goods we wish would come back, its place in canned-cuisine history is cemented thanks to nostalgic millennials.