Bob Evans, 89; his steakhouse sausage led to restaurant chain

Bob Evans, 89, 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 at the Cleveland Clinic, Bob Evans Farms Inc. announced. The clinic said he died of complications from pneumonia.

Evans, a native of Sugar Ridge, Ohio, complained that he could not obtain good sausage for the restaurant he opened in 1946 in Gallipolis in southeast Ohio.

Starting with $1,000, a couple of hogs, 40 pounds of black pepper, 50 pounds of sage and other ingredients, he opted to make his own, relying on the hog’s best parts as opposed to the scraps that were commonly used in sausage. He began selling it at the restaurant and in 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 that had sales of $1.6 billion in the fiscal year ended April 28. The chain has 590 restaurants in 18 states.

The company also operates 108 Mimi’s Cafe restaurants in 19 states, mostly in the West, after taking over the Tustin-based company in 2004. Its sausage and other products are sold in grocery stores.