Chef Boyardee has been a canned pasta brand since soldiers brought it home from World War II.
Owner Hometown Food Company is now expanding the 98-year-old name into new meal formats and a high-protein line.
"NOW WE'RE CHEFFIN'" is the September campaign carrying this expansion across CTV, display, social, and retailer media.
It puts the brand's 10 new products alongside the familiarity of its classic canned pasta.
Hometown Food Company acquired the brand from Conagra in 2025.
"We see tremendous runway for Chef Boyardee," Dan Anglemyer, COO and CMO at Hometown Food Company, said in a press release.
"Few brands have this level of awareness, trust and history."
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Since the June 2025 acquisition, the company has added Skillet Meals, Protein Canned Pasta, and a NASCAR Cup Series partnership to the brand.
Hometown Food is giving its legacy brand more occasions to compete in while keeping its existing recognition intact.
Chef Boyardee turns 100 in 2028, which gives it two years to make the new product lineup stick.
Hometown Food Expands the Shelf-Stable Lineup
"NOW WE'RE CHEFFIN'" presents Chef Boyardee as a full shelf-stable meal brand.
The portfolio now includes five Skillet Meals varieties:
- Beef Pasta
- Cheeseburger Mac
- Meat Lasagna
- Cheesy Italian Shells
- Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo
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The brand also launched Protein Canned Pasta nationwide in August.
Each can delivers 25 to 27 grams of protein, giving the campaign a direct benefit for its product messaging.
Chef Boyardee also returned to NASCAR in January through a Cup Series deal with KHI Management and Hyak Motorsports.
The brand sponsored Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s No. 47 Chevrolet and handed out more than 100,000 meals during Daytona 500 race week.
Hometown Food has since extended the deal through the 2028 season, with Chef Boyardee taking six primary Cup Series races a year.
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The campaign gives all of it one line to sit under.
Legacy brands with this level of awareness expand fastest when one campaign line covers every new product and sponsorship.
Media buying then compounds on a single idea instead of being split across five separate ones.
48% of Adults Want More Protein
Chef Boyardee's product strategy lines up with major changes in how Americans eat.
Circana found that 86% of U.S. food occasions now come from home, while 48% of adults are seeking more protein.
Convenience also decides what consumers eat at home.
Half of all meals now take less than five minutes to prepare, with 65% of breakfasts, 56% of lunches, and 35% of dinners meeting this threshold.
The data gives Chef Boyardee’s new formats a clear consumer context.
Skillet Meals and Protein Canned Pasta address the demand for quick meals while adding more product variety to a familiar brand.
The market context suggests three lessons for brands updating established products.
- Familiarity can support new formats. Brands should keep recognizable cues across new products to make category expansion easier to understand.
- Functional benefits can create new purchase reasons. Brands should connect established products with relevant needs to reach changing demand.
- Portfolio expansion needs a simple brand story. Marketers should give multiple products one idea to make a wider shelf presence easier to remember.
Chef Boyardee's challenge is to make the new variety feel like a natural extension of its heritage and still give consumers enough reason to try them.
Our Take: Is Chef Boyardee Setting Up Its Centennial?
Chef Boyardee will celebrate its centennial in 2028, giving Hometown Food a fixed date to build toward.
We think that the setup is almost all done, because the NASCAR deal now runs through 2028 at six primary Cup races a year.
"NOW WE'RE CHEFFIN'" starts the runway with new products, new occasions, and a larger national media presence.
Protein Canned Pasta and Skillet Meals still need repeat purchases and sustained distribution to earn a permanent spot in the cart.
A centennial can generate fresh attention for a legacy brand, but attention has a short shelf life.
The more useful anniversary strategy is creating new reasons for consumers to keep buying on a normal day.
Brands with strong recognition can use this model when their existing name still has room to stretch.
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