Hector Boiardi, founder of Chef Boy-ar-dee Foods, one of the first packaged Italian food businesses in the nation, died Friday night after a short illness. He was 87 years old.

Mr. Boiardi, who started his company in 1928, was its president until 1946 when he sold it to American Home Foods Company, a subsidiary of American Home Products Corporation of New York. His company was first called Chef Boiardi, but Mr. Boiardi found that customers and salesmen had difficulty pronouncing his name, so he changed the brand name to the phonetic spelling, ''Boy-ar-dee.''

''Everyone is proud of his own family name but sacrifices were necessary for progress,'' Mr. Boiardi said at the time.

Born in Piacenza, Italy, Mr. Boiardi worked as an apprentice chef in a hotel in his hometown starting at the age of 11. He came to the United States in 1917 and worked at hotels in New York and Greenbrier, W.Va., where he directed the catering at the reception for President Woodrow Wilson's second marriage.