The brothers were born in the town of
Hrupishta, in the
Ottoman Empire, to Bulgarian parents. Their father Kostadin was a member of the
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, and actively participated in the affairs of the
Bulgarian Exarchate. The town was annexed during the
Balkan Wars (1912-1913) by Greece. The
partition of the Ottoman lands of the
region of Macedonia between the Balkan nation-states resulted in the fact that some of the
Slavic speakers of Ottoman Macedonia emigrated to Bulgaria, or left the area. Athanas (Tom) was born in 1892. During the
First World War, he was a soldier in the
Bulgarian Army. In 1917, he was dismissed and moved to the Bulgarian capital
Sofia, where he worked for a time as an accountant. but after selling
hot dogs there for some time, the brothers followed their big brother
Argir (Argie) to
Cincinnati. Born in 1880, he was a cashier of the
Bulgarian Exarchate Church-School Board in Hrupishta. In Cincinnati, the brothers began to develop their own business. Tom got a job as a bank clerk and worked at night, cooking chili for the customers in his brother's place. It was at this time that Tom invented the regional specialty known as Cincinnati chili. In 1922, they opened a hot dog stand located next to a burlesque theater
called the Empress, which they named their business after. Tom and John returned to Bulgaria to find wives, while Argir went to his homeland for this purpose. Argir stayed there for several years, and when he came back, his two brothers were well established and provided him a job as a cashier. According to the journalist Vasil Stephanoff, in 1933 the Kiradjieff brothers were among the most successful
Bulgarians in the city, owners of a large and modern restaurant in the city center. Argir's wife did not adapt to America, and they moved back to
Macedonia in the 1940s. Empress Chili grew to become a local chain. In 1959, the Kiradjieffs of Empress Chili announced that they would be the first to come up with a new design for drive in car-service. The last man who ran the family business was Tom's son, Assen (Joe) Kiradjieff (1930-2024). Since the late 1950s, when his father's health sharply declined, Joe operated Empress Chili. Tom died in 1960, while John had died in 1953. Later, the Empress chain had a single surviving outlet. In 2009, 79-year-old Joe retired and sold Empress Chili. ==Gallery==