Donald Tober, the 89-year-old artificial CEO and co-owner of the New York-based Sugar Foods, whose flagship brand was the iconic Sweet’N Low, jumped to his death from his Park Avenue apartment this morning.
According to the New York Post who reported the story, Tober, who was reportedly diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, leapt just before 5 a.m. Friday, and was found in the courtyard of the luxury Upper East Side building between 65th and 66th streets.
Tober turned Sweet’N Low, and its iconic pink packets, into a staple at diners, kitchen counters and more along with Sugar in the Raw and N’Joy nondairy creamer.
By the mid-’90s, some 80 percent of foodservice establishments used Sweet’N Low; giving the artifical sweetener more than 80 percent of the sugar substitute market, Restaurant News reported.
“Donald IS Sweet’N Low,” the president of Sugar Foods, Steve Odell told the Restaurant News in 1995.
Tober would add, “Basically, we’re concerned with everything that surrounds the coffee cup. We’re tightly focused.”
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“Don’s had as much to do with building Sweet’N Low into a household name as anyone ever has with a product. Every packet of Sweet’N Low sold today can be traced back to a single sales call that he probably made or at least had a part in,” Odell, his business partner of 51 years, said.
A Harvard Law School grad, Tober was a former chairman at The Culinary Institute of America and a founder of City Meals-on-Wheels.
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Tober was the husband of Barbara Tober, who worked for three decades as editor-in-chief of Brides magazine and was a former trustees board chair at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan. The couple lived on the building’s 11th floor.
SOURCE: New York Post
