Vincent DeDomenico, 92; created Rice-A-Roni

Vincent DeDomenico, an icon of the pasta industry who was instrumental in his family-run company’s creation of Rice-A-Roni, the legendary “San Francisco treat,” has died. He was 92.

DeDomenico, who later built and operated the Napa Valley Wine Train, died Thursday in his sleep at his home in Napa, Calif., said his daughter, Marla Bleecher.

He had not been ill and had been working in his office at the train station in Napa the night before he died.

“He was a warm, fun guy, somebody who liked a good time but whose work was his life,” Bleecher said. “For him, work and play were all the same thing.”

The son of Italian immigrants who owned a family pasta company originally called Gragnano Macaroni Factory and renamed the Golden Grain Macaroni Co., DeDomenico, along with his brothers Tom and Paskey, took over the business shortly before their father died in 1943.

In the late 1950s, DeDomenico began working on the idea of packaging dry rice and vermicelli with seasonings in one package to be sold in grocery stores and launched Rice-A-Roni.

Rice-A-Roni quickly became associated with the City by the Bay, thanks to the company’s national commercials featuring cable cars and the catchy jingle: “Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat; Rice-A-Roni, the flavor can’t be beat.”

“My dad was insistent on a jingle that people would remember,” Bleecher said. “That’s what made it successful.”

DeDomenico and his brothers bought the Ghirardelli Chocolate Co. in 1964 and soon added the main Ghirardelli plant onto the Golden Grain factory in San Leandro.

The innovative DeDomenico helped develop microwave machines to dry pasta in the ‘70s.

In 1986, the family sold its various companies to Quaker Oats for a reported $300 million.

But after five decades in the pasta business, DeDomenico had no intention of retiring.

“I thought, ‘What am I going to do now? I like to keep busy. I’m not a golfer,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2002. “I heard someone up here had an idea for a wine train. I came up to check it out. I was looking for a fun, new thing.”

DeDomenico spent millions buying and restoring vintage rail cars and repairing the railroad’s ties, trestles and bridges and creating new depots at Napa and Yountville.

Despite opposition from vintners and landowners, he launched year-round daily dining excursions between Napa and St. Helena in 1989.

“I never ceased to be amazed at his capacity to learn and endeavor new challenges,” said Erica Ercolano, the longtime director of marketing and business development for Napa Valley Wine Train Inc.

“He was the embodiment of entrepreneurship born of the Depression era,” she said. “He was the consummate, patriarchal, fair-minded taskmaster. And the hardest-working person I will ever know.”

Ercolano said DeDomenico came to work “darn near every day. His wife would make him go on sabbatical to their place in Hawaii in January when the weather was not good here.”

But, she said, “He hated vacations. He called us every day, he faxed us every day. He loved to work.”

Aside from the train, DeDomenico also had a large cattle and farming operation in the Sacramento Valley.

The fourth of six children, DeDomenico was born in San Francisco on Sept. 29, 1915. Three years earlier, his father had launched Gragnano Macaroni Factory, which supplied dried pasta to the city’s Italian markets and restaurants.

After graduating from high school, DeDomenico began working in his family’s company full time as a salesman while attending night classes in accounting and business at Golden Gate College.

In addition to his daughter, he survived by his wife, Mildred; their other children, Michael DeDomenico, Vicki McManus and Vincent DeDomenico Jr.; seven grandchildren; and his sister, Katherine Reichert.

The family requests that donations in his memory be made to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Napa Valley, the Napa Valley Opera House, Queen of the Valley Hospital or St. Helena Hospital.

A public celebration of DeDomenico’s life will be held at 4 p.m. Thursday at the Napa Valley Wine Train station, 1275 McKinstry St., Napa.

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dennis.mclellan@ latimes.com