Richard Edmund LaMotta (May 20, 1942 – May 11, 2010) was an American attorney and entrepreneur, the creator and principal promoter of the

Chipwich The Chipwich is an ice cream sandwich made of ice cream between two chocolate chip cookies and then rolled in chocolate chips. The Chipwich name and logo is trademarked by Crave Better Foods, LLC based in Cos Cob, Connecticut. The original, cr ...

ice cream sandwich An ice cream sandwich is a frozen dessert consisting of ice cream between two biscuits, skins, wafers, or cookies. The ingredients are different around the world, with Ireland and Israel using wafers, and North America using chocolate cookies. ...

, which he introduced to New York City in 1982 with a guerrilla marketing campaign.

Early life and education

Richard Edmund LaMotta was born on May 20, 1942, in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, one of two children of Joseph and Mary (Gibbons) LaMotta. An Italian Catholic immigrant from

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

, his father worked as a drummer and diaper salesman. One of Richard's much older cousins on his father's side was Jake LaMotta (b. 1922), who became the middleweight boxing champion. LaMotta graduated from

Brooklyn Technical High School Brooklyn Technical High School, commonly called Brooklyn Tech and administratively designated High School 430, is an elite public high school in New York City that specializes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It is one of th ...

. He went on to earn a B.S. in Economics from

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

and then a J.D. from

New York Law School New York Law School (NYLS) is a private law school in Tribeca, New York City. NYLS has a full-time day program and a part-time evening program. NYLS's faculty includes 54 full-time and 59 adjunct professors. Notable faculty members include E ...

in June 1975. He earned both degrees while taking classes at night and working at various jobs during the day, including a job for several years as an audio engineer at CBS for The Ed Sullivan Show. As a college freshman, LaMotta developed his own record label. After negotiating with the college business office, music professors, and executives at

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

BMG Music Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of a German media company Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on 1 October 2008. Although it was established in 1987, the music com ...

Deutsche Grammophon Deutsche Grammophon (; DGG) is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of ...

, etc., he created a two-record album featuring recordings for the Music 101 class, which was required of all

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

students. He sold more than fifty thousand albums.

Chipwich

In 1981, LaMotta developed the Chipwich. On May 1, 1982, he began a

guerrilla marketing Guerrilla marketing is an advertisement strategy in which a company uses surprise and/or unconventional interactions in order to promote a product or service. It is a type of publicity. The term was popularized by Jay Conrad Levinson's 198 ...

campaign, in which he trained and enlisted sixty students as street cart vendors to sell the Chipwich on the streets in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. A few hours later, all twenty-five thousand Chipwich sandwiches had been sold. After two weeks, forty thousand Chipwiches were being sold each day. The campaign established Chipwich as a successful brand.

CoolBrands International CoolBrands International was a Canadian frozen food and dessert company based in Markham, Ontario. Originally a frozen yoghurt vendor, CoolBrands acquired Eskimo Pie Corporation in 2000 and Chipwich in 2002. It acquired the Breyers and Light 'N ...

, once the second-largest ice cream distributor in the United States, bought the Chipwich brand in 2002. After encountering financial difficulties in 2004, CoolBrands sold

Eskimo Pie Edy's Pie (formerly known as Eskimo Pie) is an American brand of chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream bar wrapped in foil. It was the first such dessert sold in the United States. It is marketed by Dreyer's, a division of Froneri. In wake of the ...

and Chipwich to

Dreyer's Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, Inc. ("Dreyer's"), is an American ice cream company, founded in 1928 in Oakland, California, where its present-day headquarters office remains. The company's two signature brands, ''Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream'' and ''Edy's ...

(a division of

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 ...

) in 2007, and divested most of its other core businesses. Nestlé ultimately discontinued the Chipwich brand. However, current owners Crave Better Foods LLC relaunched the Chipwich in 2018. LaMotta was featured in more than 8,000 stories in newspapers, magazines and other media covering the past 25 years. He received the ''Ad Age'' Executive Marketing Award, ''

Adweek ''Adweek'' is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1979. ''Adweek'' covers creativity, client–agency relationships, global advertising, accounts in review, and new campaigns. During this time, it has cover ...

'' magazine's Hottest Product of the Year Award, and ''Sales and Marketing'' magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

References

External links

Richard LaMotta's description of the founding of Chipwich Inc. (Chipwich official site)Notable Alumni Profile: Richard LaMotta
New York Law School {{DEFAULTSORT:Lamotta, Richard 1942 births 2010 deaths American inventors New York Law School alumni American businesspeople People from Brooklyn American lawyers and judges of Italian descent Brooklyn Technical High School alumni Brooklyn College alumni 20th-century American lawyers

Early life and education

Chipwich

References

Further reading

External links