Eric Mingrino, inventor/ manufacturer, in his Greenpoint workshop. Photo by Allen Ying
As a kid, Eric Mingrino fantasized about being an inventor, and when his father was alive, they dreamed of someday opening a company together to develop inventions.
Mingrino remembers his first “Eureka” moment as a ten-year-old boy watching his mother making pancakes in their Greenpoint kitchen. As she struggled to balance a spoon underneath the pan to tilt it while cooking, so that the grease would drain off to the side, he told her that one day he was going to invent a pan tilted on an angle with a little hole in it to drain the grease, and he went and drew the plans for it. “And years later, who came up with it? George Foreman. Same exact thing I drew when I was ten. He sold millions of these things! Every time I see that I say, oh man.”