Adolph Levis; Created Meat Snack Slim Jims

Adolph “Al” Levis, who invented Slim Jims, the dried meat snack popular in both hikers’ backpacks and the hands of sports-viewing couch potatoes, has died at the age of 89.

Levis died Tuesday at a hospice in Boca Raton, Fla.

An early starter in the food business, Levis dropped out of high school during the Depression and sold spices, pickles and condiments. The Philadelphia youth, operating out of his garage, next sold pickled pigs feet, tomatoes and cabbages to bars and delicatessens.

Levis worked with partner Joseph Cherry in the 1940s to have a local meatpacker concoct a small, easy-to-eat dried beef stick for snacking. He named the product Slim Jim and paired it with a top-hat-and-tails man as an emblem for the brand, hoping to make the snack an elegant accompaniment to cocktails.

Initially, the beef sticks were stored in jars of vinegar and served at bars, but by the 1950s Cherry-Levis Food Products began wrapping the Slim Jims in cellophane.

Levis sold the company to General Mills in 1967 for about $20 million. He moved to Florida and became a philanthropist, donating more than $3.5 million to the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County.

He also donated $2 million for what became the Adolph and Rose Levis Jewish Community Center in Boca Raton, and after his wife died in 1994, he gave $1 million for a care center for victims of Alzheimer’s disease.

General Mills sold the Slim Jims line as part of Goodmark Foods in 1982. ConAgra acquired the company in 1998. Over the years, Levis’ popular beef sticks have evolved, eliminating organ meat and some additives, adding chicken meat and additional spices.

Marketing has shifted from bars to convenience stores, with advertising geared toward young boys and men interested in spectator sports.