Diner Owner Plans to Take Chili National : Marketing: With namesake character Bennie the Bum as its logo, a product which originated at a tiny eatery in Laguna Beach is already at the concession stands in Anaheim Stadium.

There’s this bum sitting at the counter of a diner, see? And he’s spooning chili into his mouth with his pinky finger in the air, see? He thinks he’s got culture, but the joke’s on him: He’s using the wrong hand to hold the spoon.

Spoon, shmoon. Even a bum knows good chili when he tastes it.

That is the idea behind the logo featuring “Bennie the Bum” that is being used to market chili at Anaheim Stadium and, if all goes according to plan, in fast-food restaurants, grocery stores, baseball parks and football stadiums across the country.

The inspiration for the cartoon character Bennie is Ed Campellone, proprietor of Bennie the Bum’s Diner in Laguna Beach. He is a 45-year-old Philadelphia native who, in a burst of East Coast impatience and West Coast individualism, opened the all-night diner in 1985 after having searched the area in vain for a cup of coffee at 3 o’clock one morning.

The offbeat, ‘50s-style diner has become a local legend, and now Campellone, as Bennie, could be about to make his national debut. “I like to think of Ed as being the future Colonel Sanders,” said Rob Lusk, financial officer for BTB Food Corp., the Orange County company that has been formed to market the chili.

The chili made its debut at Anaheim Stadium this spring, with advertisements featuring Bennie the Bum in the California Angels’ 1990-91 program and on reader boards at eight of the stadium’s 34 concession stands. The idea is to make the character and the chili familiar to people before the product appears in grocery stores, Lusk said.

He hopes to have the chili in other West Coast stadiums run by ARA Services, the concession operator at Anaheim Stadium, in time for the football season. He is also negotiating with Carl’s Jr., Sizzler and other restaurants to carry Bennie the Bum’s chili on their menus. Lusk said the company is also considering opening small takeout stands called Bennie the Bum’s Jr. in downtown areas and malls.

Lusk and Campellone met when they worked together developing the Tommy Lasorda Food Co. line of pasta sauces. Lusk was a founding partner of Lasorda Food, and Campellone, a 30-year veteran of the restaurant business, was a consultant on recipes. Campellone said that seeing someone else develop a retail line convinced him that he could do it too.

The chili Campellone serves at his diner is unlike most--soupier in consistency, less fatty, with chunks of meat instead of the usual ground beef. It is mildly spicy with identifiable bits of tomato and green pepper, but there is not a bean in sight. “Some people don’t like it with beans,” Campellone said.

At Anaheim Stadium, the chili is served with beans and without. Campellone is refining recipes for chicken and vegetable chili when it comes time to expand the product line.

Business has been slow at the diner, with recent oil slicks dirtying beaches and Laguna Beach’s hefty parking prices discouraging visitors, Campellone said. “To offset that and to keep us in the limelight as a diner, we decided to diversify,” he said.

Decorum at Bennie the Bum’s is reputed to be less than that of other Laguna Beach restaurants. For example, there is the 48-year-old waitress who sometimes dances on a table to the ‘60s tune “Wild Thing.” Then there are the T-shirts that read “I was bounced out of Bennie the Bum’s” that Campellone offers customers escorted out of the four precious booths and off the seven counter stools during busy summer hours.

It is an atmosphere that Ed Elias, general manager of concessions for Anaheim Stadium, responded to when he stopped in for a bite at the diner earlier this year. “It was a little old ‘50s place; the waitresses were like at Mel’s Diner (on the TV program ‘Alice’),” he said. “The guy next to me said I ought to try the chili, that’s the thing you get quickest. So I tried it.”

He asked Campellone if he was interested in selling his chili at Anaheim Stadium. Campellone jumped at the chance.

Before BTB offers the canned version for retail sale, Lusk is hiring a well-known market research firm, Burke Marketing Group, to evaluate the chili’s potential on grocery store shelves. He said he hopes to use the research results to convince banks that BTB is a good investment.

In addition to Lusk and Campellone, BTB’s officers include Karen Christensen, who is part owner of the diner and runs an interior decorating business in Marina del Rey, and Rowland Hanson, a marketing consultant in Bellevue, Wash.

Lusk has high expectations for the chili, hoping to generate sales in the millions within a couple of years. He also hopes to donate a percentage of gross sales each year to help the homeless.

“This company’s founders have social conscience, and the character lends itself to representing this issue,” Lusk said. “A bum is a charitable person, with the social conscience of the average guy on the street.”

He said BTB plans to hold a dinner for homeless people in the cities it enters with its retail product.

Bennie the Bum, the concept, is Campellone’s creation. Back in 1985, he needed a name for the diner he planned to open, and one night he woke up in bed saying “Bennie the Bum.” His wife told him to go back to sleep. The next morning, he sat down and drew a caricature of himself.

“My wife said, ‘You’re going to have all the bums in town eating there,’ ” he said.

Five years later, as Campellone readies himself to make his appearance coast-to-coast as Bennie the Bum, he says he is prepared.

“There should be no embarrassment that the character is a bum,” Campellone said. “Hey, that’s funny! It’s got appeal.”