An Ohio Legend Dies

 

COLUMBUS — Bob Evans, whose quest for quality sausage to serve the truckers who filled his 12-stool, 24-hour-a-day steakhouse in southeast Ohio led to the creation of a restaurant chain that bears his name, died Thursday, Bob Evans Farms Inc. announced. He was 89.

Evans died at the Cleveland Clinic, Evans’ family told the company. Bob Evans Farms Inc. said last week that he was being treated for pneumonia.

Evans complained that he could not get good sausage for the restaurant he started after World War II in Gallipolis in southeast Ohio.

Starting with $1,000, a couple of hogs, 40 pounds of black pepper, 50 pounds of sage and other secret ingredients, he opted to make his own, relying on the hog’s best parts as opposed to the scraps commonly used in sausage. He began selling it at the restaurant and mom-and-pop stores, and peddled tubs of it out of the back of his pickup truck.

It marked the beginning of what is now a restaurant chain with sales of $1.6 billion in the fiscal year ended April 28 with 590 restaurants in 18 states. The company also operates 108 Mimi’s Cafe casual restaurants in 19 states, mostly in the West. Its sausage and other products are sold in grocery stores.

“You might say the truck drivers did my research for me,” he said. “They would tell me that this was the best sausage they ever had, and then buy 10-pound tubs to take home.”

Evans formed Bob Evans Farms in 1953 with five friends and relatives. The chain emphasizes farm-fresh food, cleanliness and service in a homey atmosphere.

“People like to deal with farmers. They like to buy stuff from the farm. They think it’s fresher,” Evans said in a 2003 interview. “In their mind, it’s better and they’re willing to pay more for it.”

Bob Evans wanted to serve breakfast to truckers at all hours. In the process, he turned a small roadside shop into a retail sausage giant and chain of family restaurants.

Evans was serving truckers in southern Ohio just after World War II, and he couldn’t find sausage that suited him. So he decided to make his own, taking care that it contained “all the hams and tenderloins,” a phrase that he eventually used to promote the meat when the business began to grow in the late 1950s.

The man who became one of the best-known Ohioans of the 20th century because of his business — and trademark grin, string ties and Stetson hats — died yesterday at the Cleveland Clinic.

Evans was being treated for complications of a stroke he suffered in February. He was 89 and is survived by his wife, Jewell, and five of six children.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Although Evans’ name is inextricably linked with comfort food, his bedrock interest was not in the kitchen but in the land. He was passionate about farming and conservation.

“When I leave this world, I want to leave it better than when I was here,” Evans said in an interview several years ago.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland called Evans a “true original.”