Seymour Siegel; Brooklyn's Potato Salad King (GREAT)
Hyfler/Rosner
Seymour Siegel, 76, Brooklyn's Potato Salad King
By STEPHEN MILLER Staff Reporter of the Sun
Seymour Siegel, who died September 20 at 76, was an
entrepreneur of appetizing.
Starting as a humble takeout roast chicken store in
Yorkville, Blue Ridge Farms was transformed by Siegel into
the largest manufacturer of prepared salads on the East
Coast, producing some 200 million pounds annually. "That's a
lot of potato salad," Siegel's son, Jeffrey, CEO of Blue
Ridge Farms, said.
Siegel grew up in East New York, the son of Russian
immigrants, and left Thomas Jefferson High School at age 14
to help support the family. When apprenticing under his
father, a plumber, didn't work out, he went to work for his
aunt and uncle at Blue Ridge Farms.Before World War II, the
chain had dozens of New York outlets, but most were closed
by the 1950s.
Using leftover offal from the chickens, Siegel's mother
used a family recipe to produce chopped liver, which he sold
as a sideline. Eventually, the sideline replaced the main
product,and in the late 1950s, Siegel moved from retail
chickens to wholesale salads. He opened his first factory in
Astoria, supplying Macy's, then Waldbaum's and other
supermarkets.
As the business grew, it diversified into more than 100
kinds of salads, as well as knishes and pickles. It
continues to make at least 11 different kinds of potato
salad alone, each targeted to a different regional market.
Siegel patented a method of saturating water with ozone
for cleaning equipment and also chilling produce in a
sterile environment. He also developed new procedures for
skinning potatoes and processing other salad ingredients,
Jeffrey Siegel said. "He knew how flavors run together, he
was like a chef and could feel food in a different way than
most of us." One of his more innovative versions of potato
salad included red potatoes, Yukon golds, and yams.
Sometimes he struck out, though - for instance, when he
attempted to introduce a spaghetti pie.
In the 1970s, Siegel brought his sons, Jeffrey and
Richard, into the business, and they convinced him to adopt
more aggressive marketing strategies. The business grew to
more than $100 million in annual sales.It employs 600 people
at its Cypress Hills factory on eastern Atlantic Avenue. The
company also has two other factories, in Miami and Chicago.
Controlling interest was sold earlier this year to Chloe
Foods Corporation.
Blue Ridge is today a stand-alone brand in many Southern
groceries, but in the New York market, the salads are still
mainly sold from behind the glass at deli counters.This
preserves the illusion that they are made in-house.
Siegel viewed himself as a vision of the American Dream,
the son of immigrants who made good, and he lived it to the
hilt. Although his salads were delicious, his personal
accoutrements were not necessarily in the best of taste.
Brass nymphs and pharaohs festooned his office, which was
also decorated with financial highlights: his first
bankbook, recording a 25-cent deposit to the East New York
Savings Bank in 1940, as well as a certificate for the $16
million loan he took out in 1990 to renovate his plant.
Bedecked with a nugget-sized pinkie ring and an
ostentatious diamond bracelet proclaiming his first name,
Siegel weighed in the neighborhood of 300 pounds. Thanks to
a career spent moving factory equipment, he had strength to
spare. His idea of a practical joke was to pick up a friend's
car, front end first, and move it onto the curb. Cars were a
particular love, and he owned a 1929 Duesenberg,a 1965
Rolls-Royce, and a 1984 Maserati.
Subordinates often greeted him with a kiss to the cheek,
but it was a distant cousin, Bugsy Siegel, who was the
mobster.
Seymour Siegel
Born June 6, 1929, in Brooklyn; died September 30 at
Boca Raton Community Hospital of complications of cancer;
survived by his wife, June née Marks, sons Richard and
Jeffrey, and six grandchildren.