Baker’s Drive-Thru hardly is the largest chain among those included in this year’s Top 400 list. You’ll find it ranked No. 383, but you won’t find one of its restaurants unless you’re driving through California’s San Bernardino or Riverside counties, where its 36 units are clustered.

With average unit sales of about $1.35 million and a $7 check average, each Baker’s Drive-Thru served roughly 193,000 customers last year. Many of them may never have known or asked about the man whose name is on the sign, which is unfortunate. Neal T. Baker, who opened his burger stand in San Bernardino in 1952 and who died in May at age 84, was one of the visionary entrepreneurs who, in the mid-20th century, helped create that remarkable thing that we’ve come to know as a restaurant chain, and in so doing changed how Americans lived and ate.

Sadly, the multiunit-restaurant industry has lost several of its pioneers in the past year. The publication of R&I’s 44th annual ranking of the Top 400 chains in this issue is an apt occasion for remembering the contributions of those who took the risk of opening across the state and then maybe across the nation. Baker and the many others like him were dreamers, but surely they never were so bold as to imagine that what what was being set in motion would grow to $292.1 billion, the combined 2007 sales of this year’s Top 400 chains.

Carl Karcher—who died earlier this year at age 90—and his wife, Margaret, used their car as collateral for a $311 loan in 1941 in order to buy a hot-dog cart in Los Angeles. Their full-service Carl’s Drive-In Barbeque restaurant opened in Anaheim, Calif., a few years later, and the first Carl’s Jr. burger stands opened in 1956. Carl’s Jr.’s sales were nearly $1.5 billion last year.

Al Copeland hocked his car when he was 18 in order to open a doughnut shop in his native New Orleans. He was the staff. And when Kentucky Fried Chicken came to town, Copeland saw the future and created Chicken on the Run. When it floundered, he spiced up his chicken recipe and renamed the concept Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken. He was an adroit trend-spotter: As casual dining began to take hold, he developed his first Copeland’s of New Orleans in 1983. Copeland died this year at age 64.

Several others who, early on, understood what consumers wanted and figured out new ways to provide it, passed away in the past year. Baskin-Robbins co-founder Irv Robbins, who knew he couldn’t offer too many flavors. Alfred Peet, who believed in coffeehouses way back in 1966, when he launched Peet’s Coffee & Tea. Lovie Yancey, who in 1947 had the audacity to name her three-stool burger stand Mr. Fatburger.

In reading through the Top 400 ranking, look past the numbers occasionally and remember that each brand began as a dream and a gamble. The foodservice industry always will need gamblers.

shume@reedbusiness.com