The Merage family is a wealthy

Iranian Jewish Persian Jews or Iranian Jews ( fa, یهودیان ایرانی, ''yahudiān-e-Irāni''; he, יהודים פרסים ''Yəhūdīm Parsīm'') are the descendants of Jews who were historically associated with the Persian Empire, whose successor s ...

family residing in

Orange County, California Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, a ...

. In 2004 the Merage Jewish Community Center opened in Irvine, California; the center was named after the Merage Family and serves the needs of Orange County. David and Paul Merage co-founded Chef America Inc. where they created the popular microwavable snack

Hot Pockets Hot Pockets is an American brand of microwaveable turnovers generally containing one or more types of cheese, meat, or vegetables. Hot Pockets was founded by the Chef America Inc. Since April 20, 2002, they have been produced by Nestlé. H ...

in the early 1980s. The brothers later sold the Chef America Inc. company to

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Switzerland, Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other me ...

for $2.6 billion. Hot Pockets were manufactured in Englewood, Colorado, Chef America's former headquarters, until moving its business to the rest of

's frozen business in

Solon, Ohio Solon ( ) is a city in southeastern Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. A suburb of Cleveland, it is part of the Cleveland metropolitan area. According to the 2020 census, the population of Solon was 24,262. The city has been recognized by ''M ...

. Paul Merage's daughter Michelle Janavs, a food executive who was at one point regarded as the Hot Pockets "heiress," was later implicated in the notorious Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal and later sentenced in February 2020 to five months in prison after pleading guilty to paying

Rick Singer In 2019, a scandal arose over a criminal conspiracy to influence undergraduate admissions decisions at several top American universities. The investigation into the conspiracy was code named Operation Varsity Blues. The investigation and rel ...

$100,000 to fix test scores for her two daughters so they could be admitted into the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

References

{{reflist Iranian Jews Iranian families Jewish families Iranian emigrants to the United States American families of Iranian ancestry Iranian philanthropists