Donald G. Tober, Sweet’N Low tycoon, dies by suicide

• Donald G. Tober, CEO of Sugar Foods Corporation and Sweet’N Low tycoon, died Friday, according to The New York Post.
• Tober, 89, was a driving force behind Sweet’N Low, the little pink packets of artificial sweetener.
• “He was bigger than life,” Tober’s 51-year-old business partner Steve Odell told the Post.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The man who helped put pink Sweet’N Low packets on millions of tables died Friday.

Donald G. Tober, chairman of Sugar Foods Corporation, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, according to the report.

According to a report in The New York Post, the 89-year-old died after jumping from his apartment in Manhattan.

Sugar Foods, which has about 1,400 employees in New York, has marketed Sweet’N Low and other well-known brands, including N’Joy coffee creamers and Sugar in the Raw. According to Post, the company stopped marketing Sweet’N Low about 15 years ago.

“He was bigger than life,” Tober’s 51-year-old business partner Steve Odell told the Post.

He said: “Don’s had as much to do with building Sweet’N Low into a household name as anyone has ever done with a product. Every packet of Sweet’N Low sold today can be traced back to a single sales call he probably made. or at least had a share in it. ‘

Sweet’N Low was created in 1957 by Ben Eisenstadt, who ran a cafeteria in Brooklyn, according to the official history of the artificial sweetener. By the 1990s, when Tober was involved, it was estimated that about 86% of grocery stores had Sweet’N Low on hand, according to a 1996 report by The Denver Post.

In the early 1980s, Sweet’N Low faced a new competitor, NutraSweet’s Equal, which came in blue packs. Both are popular artificial sweeteners, which are used in place of sugar.

According to The Denver Post, Tober devised a plan to keep Sweet’N Low relevant by holding a Great Waiter Contest. His company called for nominations for 5 million Sweet’N Low boxes and reportedly received about 3,000 essays.

“Concentrating on waiters was very important to us,” Tober told the newspaper at the time. “The ministry staff can be a sales person for us.”

During a snowstorm in New York in January 1996, Tober spoke to a reporter for The New York Daily News. He said he lost tens of thousands of dollars as a result of the storm, which kept people inside and closed restaurants.

Tober told the newspaper: “My wife woke up today and talked about how beautiful it was. I said it is not for the economy.”

Tober met his wife, Barbara D. Tober, in 1972 and married a year later, according to a 1992 profile in The Commercial Appeal, a Memphis, Tennessee newspaper.

In the report, she recalls one of their early conversations: ” Are you always so proportionate? I asked him. “What you see is what you get,” he said, and I knew he was the man for me. He is filled with energy, and men with energy have always attracted me. ”

According to a profile of the couple in The New Jewish Home, Barbara was editor-in-chief at Bride’s Magazine for about 30 years.

Both were, according to philosophy, involved in philanthropy in New York, where Donald Tober set up the Citymeals nn Wheels program. According to the American Austrian Foundation, where he was a curator, he was an avid rider and skier.

—Citymeals on Wheels (@Citymeals) 16 January 2021

Sweet’N Low was made in Brooklyn until 2016.