Amie Tsang

His death, at Vijaya Health Center, was confirmed by the company. It said he had suffered cardiac arrest.

Rajagopal had been expected to begin his sentence this month before he was admitted to a hospital in poor health. But even after his initial conviction, in 2004, his company had continued to expand, and his employees, receiving generous benefits, had remained loyal to him. Saravana Bhavan now has 127 restaurants in 24 countries, employing about 5,000 people.

Court documents in his murder case said Rajagopal had wanted to marry the daughter of one of his assistant managers but was spurned by her. She soon eloped with another man, but Rajagopal was said to have continued to send her gifts.

In 2001, after several attempts to separate the couple, associates of Rajagopal forced the man into a car and drove off. His body was found in a resort town in the Western Ghats mountain range. He had been strangled.

Rajagopal was convicted of culpable homicide by a Chennai court in 2004 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. But the term was suspended on medical grounds. In 2009, an Indian high court upgraded the conviction to murder, and the sentence was changed to life in prison. He spent the rest of his life trying to avoid jail, until India’s Supreme Court rejected his final appeal this month.

His restaurant empire had its roots in Chennai (then known as Madras), on South India’s eastern coast. Rajagopal was running several grocery stores there in the late 1970s when he overheard a salesman saying that he was planning to go to lunch in a town 3 miles away because there were no restaurants nearby. The comment gave Rajagopal an idea.

Two years later, in 1981, he opened his first restaurant, Saravana Bhavan, in Madras, even though he was deep in debt from his struggling grocery stores and knew little about food service.

Going against advice, Rajagopal used quality ingredients in his food and paid his workers relatively high wages. He was soon losing 10,000 rupees a month (about $2,500 in today’s money) but demonstrating a strong work ethic.

“He probably didn’t have enough time for his family because he was so devoted to the businesses,” said a family friend, Balu, who does public relations work for Saravana Bhavan. (Like many in South India, Balu has one name.)

The restaurant focused on South Indian cuisine, serving freshly cooked dosas, a type of crispy golden rice and lentil crepe. As his chain expanded, the dish would earn him the nickname the “dosa king” in the media. He also sold snacks like idlis, soft round steamed rice cakes, and vadas, a kind of lentil doughnut, serving them with freshly cooked chutneys.

As his tasty, inexpensive food gained a following, his restaurant eventually turned a profit, enabling him to open branches. In 2000, with about 20 locations in India, Saravana Bhavan ventured overseas, opening in neighborhoods where the Indian diaspora had a strong presence. The chain expanded first into Dubai, then to cities like New York, London and Sydney. Though it operates under a franchise model, its chefs continue to come from Chennai.

With his growing success, Rajagopal increased benefits for workers, giving them housing assistance and medical care and their relatives employment. He would bestow books on their children and provide marriage allowances for their daughters. Employees repaid him with their loyalty, referring to him as “annachi,” a Tamil term for elder brother.

Like an elder brother, though, Rajagopal was known to be strict. Employees who broke rules, like drinking or using their phones while on the job, would be summoned to his office and have to wait in line to be disciplined.

“When he wants things done a certain way, he’s quite intimidating,” his son Saravanan told The New York Times in 2014.

Even after Rajagopal’s murder conviction, his restaurants continued to do well. One loyal customer told The Times, “As long as he’s giving me good-quality food, I go there.”

Pitchai Rajagopal was born on Aug. 5, 1947, in Punnaiyadi, a village in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India. His father, Pitchai Nadar, was an onion seller; his mother, Mani Ammal, was a homemaker.

Pitchai left school after seventh grade for a job wiping tables at a restaurant in a resort town. He moved to Madras as a teenager and worked his way up to opening grocery stores there.

Ill health had kept Rajagopal away from his business in recent years. He had diabetes and hypertension and also had a stroke. By the end of his life he was almost blind.

Saravanan, his youngest son, now runs the business in India, while Rajagopal’s older son, Shiva Kumaar, is chief executive of the company’s international operations. In addition to his sons, Rajagopal is survived by his wife, Valli, and four grandchildren.

His funeral, on July 20, drew several thousand people, many of them employees. “Now that he’s gone, they’re wondering what will happen,” Balu, the family friend, said. “He was not just a businessman; he was looking after them.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/obituaries/rajagopal-saravana-bhavan-dead.html" id="f1d55f4b-5ec9-3ca7-a02d-2da474ba8cb1">The New York Times</a>.

P. Rajagopal, who founded Saravana Bhavan, one of the largest South Indian vegetarian restaurant chains in the world, died July 18 in Chennai, India, as he was facing life in prison in the murder of a man over a woman’s affections. He was 71.

P. Rajagopal, Indian Restaurateur Convicted of Murder, Dies at 71

The company announced his death on its website.

Ryan was working as a buyer for Dunnes Stores, an Irish retail chain, when he was recruited in 1969 to establish Penneys, a clothing store in Dublin.

By keeping overhead costs low and prices affordable, Penneys expanded to Derby, England, in 1973. The name was changed to Primark because J.C. Penney owned the copyright to the name outside Ireland. Primark stores in Ireland are still known as Penneys.

Primark now employs more than 75,000 people in 372 stores across 11 countries, including Spain, Italy and the United States. It does not have an online store, but its profits have grown even as rival stores have struggled.

“Arthur Ryan made fashion accessible to all, and his legacy looms large,” George Weston, the chief executive of Associated British Foods, which owns Primark, said in a statement.

Ryan appointed Paul Marchant to take over as chief executive in 2009 but remained as chairman, holding that position at his death. He had continued to offer advice on expanding the chain to new cities, Marchant said.

“He was well-read, he was very bright, it would’ve been foolish of me not to draw on that brilliance every day,” Marchant said in a phone interview. “He had the ability to see around corners.”

Ryan had a reputation for working hard and calling staff at all times of the day. If employees did not answer the phone, he would persist until they picked up, an experience that Marchant described in his eulogy for Ryan on Saturday: “When you eventually answered you would be greeted by, ‘I didn’t wake you up there, did I?’ or, ‘Ah, there you are, the dead arose and appeared to many.’”

Ryan was also known to frequent Primark stores, identifying clothes that weren’t selling and marking down their prices, sometimes to 1 euro.

He was “obsessed with cost control,” Marchant said, to the point where he would go around company offices and turn off the lights in rooms that were empty.

Ryan was quick to offer advice to employees on how they, too, could save the company money. “He would often say, ‘If you’re flying with Aer Lingus, eat as much of that free bread and soup as you can in the lounge,’” Marchant said. “‘It’ll save on having to buy an evening meal.’”

Arthur Ryan was born in Dublin on July 19, 1935, to Margaret and Frank Ryan. His mother was a nurse, his father a civil servant. After graduating from the Synge Street Christian Brothers School in Dublin, Arthur worked as a tie buyer at a department store and then at a fashion wholesaler in England. He returned to Dublin in 1965 to work as a buyer for Dunnes Stores.

When he was hired to run Penneys in 1969, the store was owned by Garfield Weston and his son, Galen, who later formed Associated British Foods, a conglomerate that today owns brands like Twinings and Ovaltine.

“I met Garfield Weston on a Friday at 2 p.m. and I started working at 3 p.m.,” Ryan said in an interview last year with the fashion industry publication Drapers.

At the time, Penneys was a two-floor store on a street with little foot traffic. Accepting a business award in 2011, Ryan recalled looking down the street on his first Saturday at Penneys and thinking: “Quarter to 11, clean, this is good for shopping. A bit of flu around. I like it.” The weather was sure to encourage people to come to his store, he joked. “Mufflers, gloves, chilblains, this is for us.”

Ryan placed an emphasis on customer foot traffic throughout his career. While other retailers were lured to shiny malls, he calculated how to position his stores near existing bus stops and car parks without having to pay a high rent. “We are very, very good at picking locations,” he said.

Primark stores are particularly popular in main shopping areas across Britain; in London, there are two on Oxford Street alone. Wherever there is a store, people on the streets can be seen toting Primark’s brown paper bags filled with clothing that can cost the equivalent of just a few dollars per item. For some items, the dry-cleaning costs more than the clothing itself, Breege O’Donoghue, a former company executive, told The Irish Times this year.

While the low prices have attracted customers, some of the company’s cost-saving measures have been criticized, notably in 2013, when the Rana Plaza building collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing more than 1,100 people working in unsafe conditions in clothing factories housed there; some of the workers were making clothes for Primark. The company has since taken pains to assert that its products are made in safe conditions, and that its workers are paid fairly.

Ryan is survived by his wife, Alma Carroll Ryan; two daughters, Jessica and Alison; two sons, Colin and Arthur; nine grandchildren; and two sisters. A son, Barry, and a grandson, Barry Jr., drowned in 2015 when they and the grandson’s girlfriend, who also died, were swept out to sea by a freak wave in Cork.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/obituaries/arthur-ryan-dead-primark.html" id="ba5d0a68-00bb-3118-a7fe-9ff2b8e68151">The New York Times</a>.

Arthur Ryan, the chairman and founder of Primark, the low-cost fashion chain that began as a single store in Dublin and grew into an international retailing giant, died on July 8 at his home in Ballsbridge, Ireland. He was 83.

Arthur Ryan, Who Founded the Low-Cost Fashion Chain Primark, Dies at 83

His death was confirmed by his sister and only immediate survivor, Clementine Allen.

There were few indications in Boizot’s youth that he would have a career as a restaurateur. He grew up on a diet of baked beans, chips and tomato soup, having eschewed meat — and his mother’s cooking — after he found out at age 5 where beef came from.

He first tasted pizza in 1948 in Florence, Italy, where he lived for three months while working as an au pair.

In his memoir, “Mr. Pizza and All That Jazz” (2016), Boizot recalled watching a pizza maker through a window tossing dough as if the ritual were a “dance.” Then he took a bite.

“It was the most appetizing thing I had ever had before,” Boizot (pronounced BOY-zoh) wrote. “In the six decades since, I must have enjoyed thousands of pizzas, but I still remember that first one.”

The death of his father in 1964 prompted Boizot to end his travels and return to England to be nearer his mother. He moved to the Soho neighborhood of London, where, to his dismay, there were no good pizzerias.

So he procured a pizza oven from Naples, found a mozzarella maker in England and bought an ailing restaurant called PizzaExpress from the widow of a film director. It had only one oven, an electric one. He paid 10 pounds for the restaurant — the equivalent of about 162 pounds, or a little more than $200, in today’s money — and assumed 14,000 pounds in debt.

When he took over the business, in 1965, the pizza slices were square and served on wax paper. A friend, however, advised him to start making round pizzas and provide cutlery, and so he did. And not wanting to risk the loss of business, he put aside his own revulsion and added meat — sausage — as one of 10 pizza toppings on the menu. But he drew the line at eggs on a Fiorentina pizza.

“I didn’t want eggs on my menu — they look silly on a pizza, the smell is atrocious, and who wants a fetus for their tea?” he explained in his book, using a British term for meal.

Boizot later began importing Peroni Nastro Azzurro beer and wine from the Frescobaldi family, whom he had met at a beach when he accidentally tripped over one of their children.

He opened a second location in 1967, near the British Museum, enlisting designer Enzo Apicella. The layout of this restaurant, with an open kitchen, minimalist décor and a red counter snaking around the room, became a template as the chain expanded, spawning franchises across the country and then the world. There are now more than 600 restaurants in 13 countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

He turned one of them, on Dean Street in London, into a jazz club.

He also bought Kettner’s Townhouse, a favorite haunt of celebrities, and started the Soho Jazz Festival, which ran for 16 years until 2002.

Boizot “revolutionized the UK restaurant scene,” PizzaExpress said in a statement, “forever bringing casual dining to the high street.”

Peter James Boizot was born on Nov. 16, 1929, in Peterborough to Gaston and Susannah (Culshaw) Boizot. His mother was a homemaker, his father an insurance inspector. He attended the King’s School in Peterborough on a choral scholarship and developed a love for grass hockey, which he continued to play for the rest of his life.

After finishing his national service in Egypt and earning a history degree at Cambridge University, Boizot worked as a traveling toy salesman in Britain and then joined the crew of a ship that sailed regularly to Paris, where he explored the jazz scene.

In his mid-20s he hitchhiked to Rome, where he sold trinkets from a handcart, including what he said were horseshoes belonging to Julius Caesar. The souvenirs caught the attention of some Associated Press journalists, who wrote an article about the dubious origins of the footwear; Boizot ended up being hired as a clerk in the AP newsroom.

Before long, he set off for Frankfurt to work for a book distributor there and was soon traveling around Europe selling books to soldiers at American Army bases.

After his success with PizzaExpress, Boizot focused on rejuvenating Peterborough, about 75 miles north of London, starting by renovating a hotel near the railway station. He liked the place so much that he moved in, along with two cats, Moët and Chandon. He also bought a new roof for Peterborough Cathedral and purchased a hockey pitch for St. Catharine’s College, his alma mater, at the University of Cambridge.

A series of unprofitable ventures followed, including a magazine, an arts center, a champagne called Boizot and bottled water called Pierre Boizeau. He funneled 1 million pounds of his own money each year into the soccer club Peterborough United, which he once owned.

Even in his 80s, he considered starting another venture: a chain of vegetarian restaurants.

As he noted in his book, “I make decisions with my gut and, fortunately for me, my gut has been good to me over the years.”

Boizot led two unsuccessful bids for office as a member of the Liberal Party and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1986, in recognition of his political and public service. He was also made a knight in Italy for raising more than 2 million pounds for the Venice in Peril Fund through sales of the Veneziana pizza at his restaurants.

In 1993, Boizot sold PizzaExpress, garnering about 35 million pounds — the equivalent of about 58 million pounds, or $73 million, in 2018. He remained president until his death.

Although he was proud of his success, he also admitted to some insecurity. He said that he never opened a PizzaExpress in Peterborough because it had a strong Italian population and he feared those diners would think his dishes were not up to scratch.

“Although I was proud of the food we made,” he wrote, “I never ate a pizza in a PizzaExpress restaurant that was as good as a pizza I ate in Italy.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/obituaries/peter-boizot-dies-pizza-express.html" id="ddcdb275-7120-3c7b-a8ca-d5e936dfed28">The New York Times</a>.

Peter Boizot, who founded the international restaurant chain PizzaExpress, beginning in Britain, where he helped shape the country’s casual dining scene, died Dec. 5 in Peterborough, England. He was 89.

Peter Boizot, Founder of the PizzaExpress Chain, Dies at 89

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Amie Tsang

Articles written by the author

P. Rajagopal, Indian Restaurateur Convicted of Murder, Dies at 71

Arthur Ryan, Who Founded the Low-Cost Fashion Chain Primark, Dies at 83

Peter Boizot, Founder of the PizzaExpress Chain, Dies at 89