Meet United States’s 100 Top Founders in the Restaurants Space

Aaron D. Spencer

Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Uno Chicago Grill

Aaron Spencer fits no one’s stereotype of the modern day chairman. He is a salesman, inventor, entrepreneur, and restaurateur. At seventy-seven years old, he’s constantly creating and hands-on, whether brainstorming with the chefs, tinkering with a new store design or measuring a new tablecloth amid amused customers. He has a wall full of government patents, including one for an instant set-up crib that could “mature” into a youth bed. Above all, Aaron has an eye for opportunity, which is how the world came to know deep-dish pizza. Aaron was born in 1931, growing up during the depression in a poor family outside Boston. As a youngster, he scoured junkyards, making bicycles from old parts, and then selling them. He worked in a jewelry factory, at the “fringes” of interior design as a drapery installer, and sold Fuller brushes door-to-door, to help pay his tuition at Boston University. In his junior year, Aaron answered a newspaper ad and began selling baby furniture through home demonstrations. He was so successful that he began making more money selling baby furniture than in his intended profession- insurance. Aaron stuck with the furniture business, and not long after college, rose to national sales manager. Aaron’s creative and entrepreneurial passion continued to grow as he sought ways to improve the products. His first patent came after World War II for the dual purpose crib, which found its way into the Sears catalog. A second patent followed for a playpen that converted into a wading pool, sandbox or car bed. Over the next three decades, Aaron accumulated several more design and mechanical patents. Successful in the children’s furniture business, a friend introduced Aaron to some tasty eats from a company called Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). In 1966, early in the wave of fast-food franchising that would later sweep America, Aaron opened the first KFC restaurant in the city of Boston. He eventually opened thirty-three stores throughout the metropolitan area, became one of KFC’s top franchisees, and stood side-by-side with Colonel Sanders in area television appearances. Ironically, it was at a KFC luncheon meeting in Chicago that Aaron Spencer’s biggest opportunity was literally served up on a platter. It was something called a “deep-dish” pizza from a unique local restaurant called Pizzeria Uno. Aaron was “pizza smitten.” With a salesman’s persistence, he pursued creator Ike Sewell for three years, finally winning licensing rights to carry the concept beyond Chicago. In 1979, Aaron Spencer introduced the “thin crust East Coast” to deep-dish, opening his first Pizzeria Uno at 731 Boylston Street in Boston. The concept was a hit, and within six years Aaron sold his KFC restaurants to become deep-dish pizza’s full-time developer. Today, there are over 200 restaurants in thirty-three states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Dubai and South Korea. In order to better represent Uno’s evolution into a restaurant that combines a classic neighborhood grill with world famous pizza, all units were recently renamed UNO Chicago Grill. Aaron Spencer’s entrepreneurial spirit is still going strong at UNO Chicago Grill and might well be found in the test kitchen inventing new dishes with lobster or shrimp. Then again, when a new store employee calls headquarters about an odd looking landscaper outside, we know Aaron “The Clipper” is at it again. Or he could be inside the restaurant, adjusting an artifact that he found years ago at an especially good flea market. With Aaron, you just never know.

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About Uno Chicago Grill: Uno Restaurant Holdings Corporation (URHC) has a system of over 200 full-service company-owned and franchised Uno Chicago Grill restaurants.

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