Richard LaMotta (May 20, 1942 – May 11, 2010) was the inventor and principal promoter of the Chipwich ice cream sandwich.
In 1981, LaMotta invented the Chipwich and began a guerilla marketing campaign, in which he trained and enlisted 100 street cart vendors (students) to sell the Chipwich in New York City. The campaign established Chipwich as a successful brand. CoolBrands, the country's second-largest ice cream distributor, bought the Chipwich brand in 2002, and sold it in 2007 to Dreyer's division of Nestlé.
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 magazine's Hottest Product of the Year Award, and Sales and Marketing magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
LaMotta held a B.S. in Economics from Brooklyn College and a J.D. from New York Law School, both earned while studying at night.
As a college freshman, LaMotta developed his own record label and (after negotiating with the college business office, music professors, and executives at RCA, BMG Music, Deutsche Grammophon, etc.) created a two-record album featuring recordings for the Music 101 class required of all City College students. He then sold over fifty-thousand albums.