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With her sultry curves, glossy brown hair and charmingly rolled R’s, actress Sofia Vergara could probably have her pick of the world’s most eligible bachelors. But she’s not dating a handsome leading man or a towering NBA star.
Rather, the Emmy-nominated “Modern Family” sexpot is engaged to her boyfriend of three years, a guy who hawks hot-dog condiments and is known as the “Onion Crunch King.”
Meet Nick Loeb, a 37-year-old businessman who is deeply passionate about the product he’s been pushing for the past two years — a crispy fried-onion condiment called Onion Crunch that bills itself as a “fresh and crispy topping” for hamburgers, hummus and so much more.
“I brought [Onion Crunch] to the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the SAG awards,” he enthuses. “I put them out on the tables or the buffets at the after-parties. I’ve taken pictures and tweeted them.”
He even brought Onion Crunch with him to the White House last summer when the “Modern Family” cast went to meet the president.
“When [Sofia] found out it was in my pocket, she made me put it back in the car,” he recalls. “But I snuck a couple of these little packets that I ended up handing to the executive chef at the White House.”
So what is Vergara, who’s been romantically linked to Miami-nightlife impresario and mob rat Chris Paciello and had an alleged fling with Colombian drug trafficker Andres López López, doing with this “dorky” guy?
Whether he’s bringing samples with him on the red carpet or making the morning-show rounds, Loeb is unabashed about using his famous fiancée to promote his product: “I’m a hustler,” says the goofy-but-handsome, 6-foot-3 New York native.
He carries a plastic shaker of Onion Crunch in his jacket pocket at all times (handily, he notes that he and his fiancée are always together, splitting their time between Los Angeles, New York and Florida).
And he says he doesn’t care when the gossip columns portray their relationship as “the glamorous girl and the Onion Crunch King.”
“I think it’s actually funny, as long as they mention Onion Crunch in the articles,” he says.
That’s not all the papers say. Loeb and Vergara are also painted as a highly volatile, on-again-off-again couple: The National Enquirer reported that Loeb is a cheating “sex addict” prone to taking part in drug-fueled orgies with prostitutes, and when Vergara’s dress ripped at the Emmys last fall, leaving her booty fully exposed, Loeb was said to be angry and unsupportive.
Loeb insists he wasn’t angry but amused and chivalrous when he wrapped his jacket around Vergara and took her to get the dress repaired in the middle of the show.
“It’s crazy. People just make up stuff,” he insists.
And what about his unbridled onion enthusiasm? Does it ever come in between him and Vergara? “She thinks it’s funny,” he says, “but she thinks I’m kinda dorky.”
And, despite his devotion to hot dogs, Loeb isn’t exactly a condiment-loving everydude. He’s the son of John L. Loeb, a Reagan-era diplomat, and the great grand-nephew of former New York governor and banking heir Herbert H. Lehman. His cousin is Edgar M. Bronfman Jr., the former chairman of Warner Music Group and an heir to the Seagram fortune.
He declines to reveal his net worth, but it’s been reported to be a cool $15 million.
After studying finance at Tulane, he dabbled in various enterprises — before settling on Onion Crunch — from real estate to carbon solutions to documentary films to politics. In 2009, Loeb ran for Florida state Senate on the Republican ticket, but he dropped out of the race after his wife of five years, a Swedish blonde named Anna, filed for divorce.
Two years later, he considered a run for the US Senate, but dropped out because he was still recuperating from a near-fatal car accident in August 2010. He and Vergara had only been dating about six months at the time — mutual friends introduced them at a Hollywood restaurant — and the actress helped nurse him back to health.
About 10 months after the accident, he launched Onion Crunch.
Vergara was especially supportive, he says, and “was literally the one to encourage me. She was like, ‘This is fantastic; I love it. This is going to be your success.’ ”
And, Loeb notes, it was a business she could easily grasp, “I don’t think she understands my [carbon solutions] business,” he jokes.
He first became passionate about fried onions as a child living in Denmark, where his ambassador dad was stationed. On a later visit to Sweden, he reconnected with the condiment and brought it home, where he’d serve the onion toppings at barbecues.
It was a hit with friends: “They were like, ‘Nick, you’ve got to start a business!’ ”
Onion Crunch is now in 21,000 stores nationwide, in flavors ranging from barbecue to bacon. (For the record, Loeb says Vergara prefers the original flavor and can’t handle the spicier varieties.) The crispy onions are made in Holland and distributed through Sweden, but Onion Crunch itself is flavored and packaged in New York. Loeb is quick to note that he’s built a brand around the generic Scandinavian condiment, and, he says, he will be launching new crunchy condiments later this year that “no one has ever created before.”
So will Vergara — who appears in ads for Pepsi and CoverGirl, just to name a few — star in an Onion Crunch commercial down the line?
“I don’t think Onion Crunch is her brand,” he concedes. “This is not really a sexy thing for Sofia.”