Clarence Birdseye Had A Hot Concept: Frozen Food; Innovate: The entrepreneur gambled that folks would warm to the fresh idea of refrigerating perishable meats and veggies.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)(BEST OF LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: REINHARDT KRAUSE

It was the 1920s, and Clarence Birdseye had a clear goal: selling packaged, frozen food to the public.

For years, people scoffed at his idea. Everyone knew that freezing vegetables and fruits spoiled them -- just witness what happened to crops in late fall and winter.

But Birdseye knew he was right to persevere. He'd worked as a fur trader in chilly Labrador from 1912 to 1916. There he watched local Inuit people preserve food such as fish. In winter, they exposed to the air just-caught fish, where it froze almost instantly in the subzero cold. When thawed and cooked months later, the fish looked flaky and tasted fine.

Success, Birdseye figured, depended on recreating the effects of nature. So he set out to develop a quick-freezing system that he could apply to all kinds of perishable food.

"He was the first master of large-production quality frozen foods," said Barry Swanson, a professor at Washington State University.

Birdseye created a factory system that imitated nature's art.