He lived in Mexico.

Since I lived in Spain for a while, I remember his products - I think one, simply called "Bimbo," was like a Twinkie.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/b...t-98.html?_r=0

By SAM ROBERTS
FEB. 6, 2017

First paragraphs:


€œPeople who eat white bread,€� the fashionista Diana Vreeland once said, €œhave no dreams.€� Selling it is something else entirely. By introducing his sliced white bread to Mexican consumers in 1945, Lorenzo Servitje fulfilled a vision that transformed the company he helped found into the biggest bakery in the world.

Mr. Servitje, who established Grupo Bimbo with four fellow dreamers, died on Friday at his home in Mexico City. He was 98.

His death was announced by the company, a Mexican conglomerate whose trademarks now include Wonder Bread, Sara Lee, Entenmanns, Thomas English muffins, Brownberry, Boboli and, in Britain, New York-brand bagels.

€œToday, if you buy Arnold bread in the East or Oroweat in the West, Freihofer in Pennsylvania or Mrs. Baird in Texas, Stroehmanns in the mid-Atlantic or Old Country in Arizona, not to mention Roman-Meal, Sun-Made and Francisco sourdough, its Bimbo,€� Aaron Bobrow-Strain wrote in €œWhite Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf€� (2012).

€œWhite bread imperialism has come home to roost,€� he added.

By the mid-1990s, imperialism might have been trumped by globalization. Grupo Bimbo was selling more tortillas in the United States than in Mexico.

The company began as a small bakery and retail store opened by Mr. Servitjes father, a Spanish immigrant from Catalonia, in 1928. It was called El Molina €” the Mill €” evoking another dreamer, Don Quixote, and the plains of La Mancha.

When his father died suddenly in 1936, Mr. Servitje (roughly pronounced sair-BEET-hey) inherited the business, gave up his work as an accountant and immediately began figuring out how to import modern American industrial baking technology.

After being delayed by World War II, Mr. Servitje and several partners, including his brother-in-law, started Bakery Bimbo at the end of 1945. They were soon joined by his younger brother Roberto Servitje Sendra.

Unaware of the pejorative connotations of the word €œbimbo€� in the United States (and Italy), the partners had innocently conjured up the name by combining the word €œbingo,€� the American version of a popular Mexican game called loteria, and the name €œBambi,€� the wholesome white-tailed fawn featured in the 1942 Disney film €” although the companys logo is a white, fluffy bear...

(snip)


Lenona.