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The Food That Built America Season 7 Episode 5
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00:01It's a three billion dollar a year industry.
00:05It's a way to create a special moment in the mundanity of all the things we eat.
00:11And over 16 million Americans drink one every day.
00:16It transformed chocolate into something that we've really never seen before.
00:21But in the 1920s, the chocolate beverage industry as we know it didn't exist.
00:28It wasn't as easy as going to the refrigerator and grabbing a carton of chocolate milk.
00:33Until three ordinary men.
00:36What if Hershey's made chocolate syrup?
00:39Pioneer three iconic products.
00:42There had never been a chocolate syrup in the grocery store.
00:46They made chocolate drinks a thing.
00:48Disrupting the status quo.
00:50He realizes there are no pre-bottled chocolate milk drinks out there.
00:54By reinventing how we consume chocolate.
00:58He envisions a product that would only have to be mixed with hot water.
01:03That's really good.
01:04But they'll face impossible odds.
01:07I'm done with the chocolate drink.
01:09If this doesn't pay off, his business collapses.
01:13And fierce competition.
01:15First Nestle, now Hershey.
01:17As they fight to ensure their groundbreaking creations.
01:21It's like dessert, but it's drinkable.
01:24It was pop that top and it's ready to go.
01:27Will stand the test of time.
01:30They changed the food landscape.
01:33Forever.
01:57The first people to consume chocolate began doing so over 4,000 years ago.
02:04It's believed that the Mesoamericans would take cacao beans and grind them into a paste.
02:10And they would mix that paste with hot water and vanilla and chili and spices and they'd brew it.
02:16And you got this frothy drink for ceremonies and for funerals.
02:20It gave people a profound amount of energy and good feeling, but didn't taste anything like the chocolate drinks we
02:30have today.
02:31Those original chocolate drinks are kind of nasty tasting.
02:35You wouldn't look down and be like, oh, that's hot chocolate.
02:38You'd be like, oh, what's that?
02:40And then in Jamaica in the late 1400s, it's believed that people were taking cacao shavings and boiling it with
02:48milk and with cinnamon.
02:50And all of a sudden it turns much more palatable.
02:52And that was one of the first versions of chocolate milk.
02:56By the early 1900s in the United States, drinking chocolate was primarily made by the well-to-do, but it
03:04was hard to make.
03:06You had to boil down the chocolate.
03:10It had to be the right temperature.
03:12It had to be the right proportion of liquid to chocolate.
03:15You had to hammer away at it until the chocolate melted.
03:20By the 1920s, as simple low-cost confections like the Hershey bar caused the popularity of eating chocolate to skyrocket,
03:29drinking chocolate becomes far less common.
03:32And no chocolate drinks are being produced and sold to the masses.
03:37Making a chocolate drink wasn't as easy as going to the refrigerator and grabbing a carton of chocolate milk.
03:43It was just too much work.
03:45And if you really wanted chocolate, you could go spend five cents and buy a Hershey's chocolate bar.
03:52In 1925, the Hershey Company is the biggest name in American chocolate,
03:57thanks in part to the latest confection from their new hire, Sam Hinkle.
04:04Hinkle comes out of Penn State with a chemistry degree, and he's working in the lab for Hershey.
04:10And he developed a winning candy bar for the company.
04:14It's milk chocolate with peanuts inside.
04:21Mr. Good Bar.
04:24While it's an immediate hit, it won't be Hinkle's most iconic creation.
04:30These Good Bar numbers are impressive.
04:33If you have one food success, it's expected that you're the whiz kid, and you will do it again and
04:41again.
04:41So the pressure's on to keep the momentum going.
04:46But Hinkle is not satisfied with just another candy bar.
04:55Actually, sir.
04:57He sees something different that he wants to create in the marketplace.
05:01Everyone is eating Hershey's, but they're drinking Coca-Cola.
05:06In recent years, the popularity of sodas has exploded with the rise of soda fountains.
05:13The passage of prohibition changed the game for soda fountains.
05:18With no alcohol available, people had to get their drinks from somewhere, and soda fountains were it.
05:23Over the last five years, the number of soda fountains in America has grown from 4,000 to 100,000,
05:30making everything from root beer to Coca-Cola.
05:35In the 1920s, Coca-Cola is without question the largest brand in soda.
05:41But most people don't realize that Coca-Cola was not making most of its money from individual bottles of Coca
05:49-Cola,
05:50but rather by selling the syrup to soda fountains.
05:55And Hinkle saw an opportunity there.
05:57What if Hershey's made chocolate syrup to sell at soda fountains?
06:03In the 1920s, refrigeration was not nearly as widespread as it is now.
06:08So to make a chocolate shake or a chocolate malt, most soda fountains make their own syrup, which is costly
06:15and time-consuming.
06:17Or they buy from some of the local producers in Chicago or New York,
06:22because there's not a nationally available chocolate syrup on the market.
06:27At this time, chocolate syrup isn't really that popular.
06:30It was something that most people haven't even heard of or tried.
06:33So clearly, there is a void.
06:36And Sam Hinkle realizes he can use chocolate to make the next big thing in drinks.
06:44Over the next few weeks, Hinkle spends vast sums of company money trying to create a chocolate syrup that will
06:51meet Milton Hershey's rigorous standards.
06:54Hershey was really exacting.
06:56He wanted his chocolate to have a certain taste and a certain texture.
07:01An identifiable Hershey brand.
07:04Hinkle didn't just melt chocolate because if you're not careful, the fat and the sugars grain up and you get
07:11this kind of big chocolate mess.
07:12And if you overheated it too much, you could burn it.
07:15So he was trying to incorporate cocoa powder.
07:19Hinkle experiments with various amounts of cane sugar, cane syrup and water to create his new chocolate syrup.
07:30Over the next few weeks, dozens of samples are rejected by Milton Hershey.
07:38But Hinkle refuses to give up.
07:45Eventually adding an ingredient the ancient Mayans also used.
07:55He adds vanilla.
08:00And that was the ingredient that he needed to tie everything together.
08:11Mr. Hershey likes it.
08:14I thought you'd be elated.
08:17Every batch from a few days ago is now like this.
08:24There's a layer of mold on it.
08:27There's a host of ingredients in this liquid that are ready to go back.
08:31And so this would not be a commercially viable syrup.
08:35His product is a failure.
08:37And he has no idea what to do.
08:41160 miles east, a hard-working soda shop owner named Natali Olivieri isn't thinking about chocolate at all.
08:50Olivieri is an Italian immigrant who came to the United States a few years ago.
08:55And he is desperate to make his soda shop successful.
08:58But over the last several months, his shop has been struggling to stand out from the more established competitors.
09:06But Olivieri is not giving up on that dream.
09:11Do you enjoy that soda?
09:13Here.
09:14On me.
09:15If you go to Italy, it's not uncommon to go to a cafe and see different flavored soda syrups added
09:22to carbonated water.
09:24So Natali Olivieri takes this Italian culinary tradition and he starts making fruit-flavored sodas.
09:31Tell your friends.
09:31And because he sells his sodas in bottles, his customers can take them on the go, which was totally unusual
09:39for that time.
09:41Coming in flavors like strawberry, raspberry and orange, he calls his line of fresh sodas true fruit.
09:48He's using really great quality ingredients to make his sodas.
09:52But he's miles behind the competition.
09:56One of the biggest fruit-based sodas on the market at this time was Orange Crush, which was distributed nationally.
10:02There's also Nehi, which was founded in Georgia and is rapidly expanding up the eastern seaboard.
10:08So it's only natural that he would want the same thing for his product.
10:13What can I get you?
10:14Two chocolate milks, please.
10:16I only have fruit soda.
10:18You could take it with you.
10:20But there's a problem.
10:23Olivieri's patrons are more in love with chocolate drinks.
10:26In fact, he sees them running across the street to the soda fountain to get them.
10:32He sees that there are no pre-bottled chocolate milk drinks out there.
10:37There's a gap in the chocolate market.
10:40So he has this light bulb moment where he decides that he is going to be the one to fill
10:47this gap.
10:53Olivieri doesn't know it, but this radical idea will lead to the creation of one of the most iconic beverages
11:00in America.
11:01Selling over 100 million bottles a year and introducing bottled chocolate drinks to the entire world.
11:12But for now, there's one problem.
11:16He doesn't know anything about chocolate, so he has no idea how to execute the very product he's envisioning.
11:28In 1926, the Hershey Company's Sam Hinkle is scrambling to create a chocolate syrup that can survive on shelves.
11:36Are you sure you want to keep heating it?
11:38He's got to heat the chocolate to melt it and also kill the bacteria to make sure nothing proliferates and
11:46we get that layer of mold.
11:47But there was a lot of challenges in trying to make syrups.
11:50Chocolate has a very high fat content, so it's highly susceptible to scorching or burning.
11:57If you heat it up too much, it can alter the taste, it can alter the texture.
12:03So most people recommend only heating it to 180 degrees.
12:08You know, above 180 will scorch the cocoa.
12:12Sometimes you got to try something new.
12:18But Hinkle wasn't buying it.
12:20He thought it needs to be 212 degrees.
12:24He thinks that with the right formula, the heat will preserve the flavor, will preserve the texture, and will kill
12:31the bacteria.
12:32But he didn't know if it would work or even if it was a good idea to try.
12:37So he heats it, then immediately seals the bottle.
12:43And they wait for weeks.
12:47While Hinkle hopes for the best, in nearby New Jersey, Natale Olivieri is desperately trying to make his bottled chocolate
12:55milk idea a reality.
12:58Natale Olivieri envisions a bottle of chocolate milk you can just have at home and enjoy it whenever and wherever
13:07you want it to.
13:08But this is a huge gamble because he's trying to do something that's never been done before.
13:14It's going to take loads of R&D, which is going to take loads of money and loads of time.
13:19So if this doesn't pay off, his business collapses, and right along with it, his American dream.
13:27Olivieri has worked tirelessly over the last few weeks, bottling various recipes in search of the perfect formula.
13:34But eventually, he realizes you can't just bottle chocolate milk and distribute it.
13:40Refrigeration isn't a widespread thing at this point.
13:43So anything you try to do with milk is going to spoil incredibly fast.
13:49So he has to make something that tastes like chocolate milk, but doesn't use any milk.
13:54Understand how crazy this is.
13:56He needs to create the essence of milk, the way it feels in your mouth, a little bit of the
14:02taste that won't spoil.
14:04So he has to think outside the box.
14:11And after several rounds of experimentation, he stumbles on an ingredient called whey.
14:19Whey is a milk protein that's a byproduct from making dairy products like yogurt,
14:25which gives us that milky flavor.
14:28It's an incredible substitute for milk.
14:31Whey has a lower fat content than milk.
14:35And that lower fat content allows his drink to stay fresher longer.
14:42But unfortunately for Olivieri, not long enough.
14:48While each batch lasts several days longer than it would with regular milk,
14:53it's still not completely shelf stable.
14:57He spent years trying to get his head out from under the water and provide for his family.
15:01So he's obsessed with trying to make this work.
15:03But in the process, his soda fountain business, it's starting to go under.
15:07And now he's sitting there wondering, is it time to just throw in the towel?
15:14Meanwhile, the team at Hershey's has been patiently waiting to see how their latest recipe has held up.
15:25When they open the can, there's no layer of mold.
15:30They've cracked the code, they've figured out how to make it shelf stable, and it's delicious.
15:36In 1926, Hershey launches its first ever chocolate syrup in large 18-ounce metal cans, specifically for commercial use.
15:46They send their salespeople out to go sell this to soda shops and even at restaurants.
15:52They can use it for milkshakes or egg creams.
15:55It's a hit. And people love it.
15:58A Hershey syrup is delicious and it is groundbreaking because it's a shelf stable chocolate syrup that can be shipped
16:06and sold nationwide.
16:07Within months, soda shops across the country are all clamoring for the revolutionary product from Hershey, Pennsylvania.
16:15But it's not available in stores. Yet.
16:20Meanwhile, Natalia Olivieri is making a big decision.
16:26I'm done with the chocolate drink.
16:30Olivieri is struggling. He's moving the needle slightly, but nothing is really working.
16:39But then he sees his wife jarring up her tomato sauce.
16:45After World War I, more and more people were canning and preserving things at home.
16:51Why do you heat up the jars?
16:53Keeps better that way.
16:54She was using something called the hot fill method.
16:58The hot fill method of food preservation is heating the interior of a bottle and also heating the liquid to
17:04about 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
17:05to sterilize everything in there.
17:09You're sealing it while it's hot.
17:11So there's no chance for any bacteria to be in your sealed container.
17:20And he suddenly is inspired.
17:30Still using his same recipe,
17:32Olivieri experiments with heating and sterilizing the bottles to make his chocolate beverage shelf stable.
17:40How's it going?
17:42Let me show you.
17:43Yeah.
17:45This one is from two weeks ago.
17:56It's good.
17:57Right?
17:58It's the most delicious cocoa flavor mixed with the smooth milkiness and it's sweet and it's like dessert, but it's
18:06drinkable.
18:08It might very well save his company, but very wisely, Olivieri realizes that having a chocolate drink called true fruit
18:16is weird and a bit confusing.
18:23And then Olivieri hears one of his wife's favorite songs called Indian Love Call.
18:38Olivieri hears that wine and coins one of the most iconic brand names of all time.
18:53In the late 1920s,
18:55Natali Olivieri has finally perfected a shelf stable chocolate drink.
19:01He calls it Yoo-Hoo.
19:05On paper, this doesn't sound like a good name. It literally tells you nothing about what the product is. No
19:09mentions of chocolate, of milk, or even of the creamy texture.
19:13But I actually think it's really brilliant because there's no preconceptions about what's in the bottle. It's Yoo-Hoo.
19:20In 1928, Olivieri begins selling the world's first bottled chocolate drink.
19:27This was the first time you didn't have to be in the soda fountains or soda shops to drink these
19:31chocolate drinks.
19:33It was pop that top and it's ready to go.
19:35While Olivieri's groundbreaking product tastes like chocolate milk, the newly established FDA issues a roadblock.
19:46There is no milk product in Yoo-Hoo.
19:50So he actually has to call it a chocolate drink, which is something it's still called today.
19:56Yoo-Hoo quickly becomes a local hit, allowing Olivieri to begin selling it all across New Jersey.
20:04People at his shop love it. Restaurants love it. Grocery stores love it because they can store it on their
20:10shelves for a long time.
20:11Ultimately, what Yoo-Hoo did was make chocolate drinks a thing. It's a whole new category.
20:17You can drink it at home. And for people who previously could only enjoy the taste of chocolate at a
20:23chocolate bar, now they can drink it.
20:25And when you give people the flavor they want and the format they want, I mean, that's a game changer.
20:32The drinks popularity soon spreads beyond New Jersey and into neighboring Pennsylvania.
20:43What's that?
20:46Chocolate drink.
20:49Doesn't come close to what you can get with our syrup at a soda fountain.
20:52Yet this, you can get in a store and drink at home.
20:58Yoo-Hoo, it's being sold directly to consumers. And Hershey sees that and they think, hey, we want a piece
21:04of that market too.
21:05And to do that, Henkel wants to expand well beyond the soda fountain.
21:11What if we sold our syrup in grocery stores?
21:15They have a winning product and they know people already love it.
21:19So they decide in addition to selling it to the soda fountains, they're going to sell their Hershey's chocolate syrup
21:24right to consumers.
21:26Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars manufacturing smaller five ounce cans.
21:32In 1928, the first nationally available chocolate syrup for home consumers hits grocery stores.
21:39Retailing for just nine cents and coming with a clever addition to the packaging.
21:45Most people had never seen a chocolate syrup in the grocery store.
21:50People didn't really know how to make anything with this can.
21:54So they made the genius move to put recipes on the back of the label, giving consumers usage ideas.
22:02You could bake with it. You could put it over ice cream. You could make a cold chocolate milk.
22:08There's so many options and it's a huge success.
22:13By 1929, Hershey's gamble on the home market for their syrup pays off, pushing their total sales to over $41
22:21million.
22:23Hershey's syrup did for chocolate milk what they had done for milk chocolate.
22:29They democratized it, they made it available, and they gave consumers a little luxury at home.
22:37This revolutionized the way that Americans could indulge in chocolate drinks.
22:42Over the next several years, while Hershey's syrup helps cold chocolate beverages become more popular,
22:48In Wisconsin, a former naval officer is searching for ways to help his family's struggling business.
22:56Charles Santa, he's a first-generation Italian American.
23:00He was a lieutenant in the Navy, and his family owns a dairy farm in Wisconsin.
23:06Founded in 1935 by Charles's father, Santa Dairys has produced and distributed milk across the northern Midwest for over a
23:15decade.
23:16But by the time Charles returns from World War II to take over the business with his brother, sales have
23:23started to nosedive.
23:25It used to be the milkman would come and deliver your milk every day.
23:28But now that people have refrigeration, they're just buying milk less often.
23:34So Santa's family dairy farm, they're in trouble.
23:37Charles Santa was very, very bright, and he was constantly trying to figure out how he can capture more of
23:43the market.
23:44He's not only a military guy, but has an engineering degree, and realizes sales in fresh milk aren't going so
23:52well.
23:52And he begins to wonder, is there a way he can create a shelf-stable dairy product that can help
24:01his family make a bit more money?
24:03That shipment's ready to go if you want to sign off.
24:07In the late 1940s, Charles Santa cracks the code for a groundbreaking product that would be the first of its
24:13kind on the market.
24:16What's that?
24:17Instant milk.
24:19Try that.
24:21This is not powdered milk.
24:23With powdered milk, you have to let it soak in water for hours before it's ready to drink.
24:29But with Santa's instant milk, you just mix it up and you can drink it instantly.
24:34But there's a problem.
24:37It's a bit gritty, don't you think?
24:43I'm gonna get you a cup of coffee.
24:45Unfortunately, his instant milk powder doesn't really integrate into cold liquid.
24:50It sort of separates and sits on top.
24:53Cups are creepy.
25:14But when he adds it to hot coffee, it melts right in.
25:23And on top of that, it tastes amazing.
25:27He drank that coffee and he was like, bingo.
25:31This isn't milk.
25:33It's a creamer.
25:35Santa doesn't know it, but his groundbreaking powder will transform into one of the most iconic products of all time.
25:42Sell 50 million boxes a year and become the number one brand in its category.
25:48But it won't be as a coffee creamer.
25:55In the late 1940s, Charles Santa has created a groundbreaking product.
26:01He names it Sanilac.
26:04It's a portmanteau of his last name, Santa, and lac like lactose.
26:09Marketing his instant milk powder as one of the first shelf-stable creamers available, Santa secures his first big customer.
26:19During the Korean War, Santa gets a huge government contract to provide his instant milk to the soldiers.
26:27In 1950, he begins producing millions of Sanilac packets for the U.S. military.
26:34And while the influx of government money keeps Santa's dairy farm going, there's a catch.
26:40There was a huge clause in the contract that he could never under-deliver.
26:46So the military put huge penalties if you didn't deliver minimum quantities.
26:51So to be on the safe side, he produced huge quantities of instant nonfat dry milk.
26:56While Santa bets the family farm on his new product, chocolate milk consumption is surging.
27:03Thanks in part to the National School Lunch Act of 1946, which subsidized dairy products to boost nutritional intake.
27:12And chocolate milk has now become a popular cafeteria option.
27:18And Sam Hinkle, who is now the number two at Hershey, is faced with some unexpected competition.
27:27Nestle Quick hits the market in America.
27:31Nestle Quick is a shelf-stable cocoa powder that you can add directly to milk.
27:37And it was a way to make chocolate milk or hot cocoa at home anytime you wanted to.
27:42First launched in Europe in 1948 by Swiss food giant Nestle, their convenient powder becomes a staple in American kitchens
27:51by the early 1950s.
27:54For decades, Hershey's chocolate syrup is the main way anyone makes chocolate milk at home.
28:00But it requires refrigeration after opening.
28:04But Nestle Quick doesn't need refrigeration at all.
28:07You just add hot or cold milk.
28:11And Hinkle realizes that this could threaten Hershey's bottom line and his personal future at the company.
28:18Gather the development team in the lab.
28:22While Hinkle tries to fend off Hershey's new challenger,
28:26back in Wisconsin, Charles Santa's decision to overproduce Sanilac has come back to haunt him.
28:32The Korean War ends, the military contract is over, and now he's sitting on a warehouse full of dried milk
28:41powder that he has to find a home for.
28:43Today, the day we finally bite the bullet and toss these things, we can barely move around here.
28:51Sina's deeply in debt with loads of product because the government never bought it.
28:56So he needs to find a use for this alternative milk product and fast.
29:02What are you doing?
29:04Kid begged me for a hot chocolate.
29:07Today, a lot of people group all hot chocolate flavored beverage into one category and they call it hot chocolate.
29:14But if we want to be very technical, the beverage made with real chocolate is called hot chocolate.
29:20The beverage made with powder is called hot cocoa.
29:24But making it was a lot of work.
29:27The cocoa powder had to be mixed into hot milk.
29:29You have to really watch the temperature so you don't scald it, burn it, separate it.
29:35If you don't stir it enough, you get a charred material on the bottom of your pan.
29:39And when it does start to boil, it foams over and makes this huge mess.
29:45Darn it.
29:47I'll go with some towels.
29:55Clearly, heating milk sucks.
29:58Boiling a pot of water is a lot easier.
30:02Santa knows that Americans have a taste for chocolate and convenience foods.
30:08But we don't want to have to boil milk to get our hot cocoa.
30:11And Santa has pounds and pounds of powdered milk on his hands.
30:15You just add water and you have milk.
30:20So he realizes he could take his milk creamer and make a brand new product.
30:25And unlike Nestle Quick, which needs to be mixed with milk,
30:30Santa envisions a product that would only have to be mixed with hot water.
30:34While Santa races to repurpose his instant milk creamer into an innovative hot cocoa mix.
30:41By the mid-1950s, Natale Olivieri has managed to increase production for his groundbreaking chocolate drink.
30:49Olivieri struggled to keep this brand afloat through the Great Depression.
30:53But he is finally able to make the jump from his garage to an actual factory,
30:59where they can manufacture 250 bottles of Yoohoo every single minute.
31:05With state-of-the-art facilities in New Jersey and South Carolina,
31:09sales up and down the East Coast now top 300,000 cases a year.
31:14Yet for all of his success, Olivieri wants more.
31:19Yoohoo is a hit product.
31:20But he doesn't have the infrastructure to go national, which he desperately wants to do.
31:25And he didn't have the reach of his competitors like Nestle or Hershey's.
31:29So he needs a way to get into the average consumer's eyes,
31:32because these competitors were gonna catch up.
31:34And with their massive reach, definitely overtake.
31:36And so he's looking for ways to sell more Yoohoo.
31:40And then one fateful night, he has a chance meeting with a bit of a celebrity at a country club.
31:47And it'll change the complete trajectory of Yoohoo's future.
31:57In 1955, the fate of Yoohoo is at a pivotal crossroad.
32:04Natale Olivieri is really working overtime trying to figure out ways to sell more Yoohoo.
32:10When he has a chance encounter with a baseball great at a local country club.
32:17The man who said it's like deja vu all over again.
32:20Yankees catcher, Yogi Berra.
32:24The winner of the past two American League Most Valuable Player Awards,
32:29Berra has helped the New York Yankees win five World Series titles in a row.
32:35Yogi Berra was a deeply beloved personality on and off the field.
32:41Although he plays for the Bronx Bombers, Yogi lives in New Jersey, about 15 miles away from the Yoohoo factory.
32:46And turns out, he's been a big fan of the chocolatey drink for a while.
32:51So Olivieri thinks to himself, maybe he could be the guy that could help me sell more Yoohoo.
32:57Nowadays, we're used to seeing professional athletes advertise everything from car insurance to their favorite cookie.
33:06Back then, there's Wheaties.
33:08But for the most part, sports figures, if they were going to do an endorsement, it was typically for sports
33:14-related goods.
33:14You didn't see a professional athlete endorsing food products.
33:19But Olivieri is not dissuaded.
33:22And eventually, he convinces Berra to be the face and the voice for Yoohoo chocolate drink.
33:28In 1956, Yogi Berra signs a groundbreaking deal to become the public face of Yoohoo.
33:35As part of his deal, he gets stock options in the company.
33:38He even gets Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford to endorse it as well, and they call it the drink of
33:44champions.
33:46And while still not a national brand, Yoohoo quickly becomes one of the fastest-growing drink brands in the country.
33:56While Yoohoo gets a much-needed boost, Charles Santa has cracked the code for what he believes could be a
34:03breakthrough product.
34:05Charles Santa figures out that you can combine sugar, cocoa powder, and his Sanilac milk.
34:11And now you have a new product, Instant Hot Cocoa.
34:16It's much easier to work with the Nestle Quick because you don't need to have hot milk.
34:23You just add it to hot water.
34:27Oh.
34:29While the popularity of cold chocolate milk has steadily increased since the end of World War II, Hot Cocoa is
34:37a different story.
34:38Hot Cocoa still wasn't that widespread of a drink in the 1950s.
34:43That's really good.
34:45Sanil's new product was unlike anything on the market.
34:48This was revolutionary.
34:49So now all he needs is a great name, and he comes up with Brown Swiss.
34:59It either sounds like bad cheese or a bad stomachache.
35:03He names it Brown Swiss after a type of dairy cow because they're trying to emphasize the milk in their
35:12product, which is what sets them apart.
35:14But he doesn't put their product on the market right away.
35:17Instead, Sanil comes up with a unique place to debut his product.
35:23Sanil has this brilliant idea to sell his Brown Swiss to commercial airlines.
35:31This was the golden age of air travel, back when they were trying to give you more food, better food,
35:38better drinks.
35:39And to save flight attendants from having to measure the powder and mix it with the hot water, he puts
35:46it in pre-measured single-serve packets.
35:50There was no major modern brand that was doing this until Brown Swiss.
35:54He made a user-friendly version of Hot Cocoa.
35:58In 1956, Brown Swiss becomes the first instant hot cocoa available on commercial airlines.
36:06But there's a problem.
36:08Airlines dropped his product because there were too many people stealing the single-serve packets.
36:14His product, it was too popular.
36:16While losing the airline contracts is a setback, Sanil sees this as proof that his high-demand product could also
36:24do well in grocery stores, with a small but innovative change.
36:29When he pivots to the grocery store, he makes these family-sized boxes of the single-packet servings that he
36:37can distribute on a large scale.
36:40And for the instant powder drink market, that entire notion was completely novel.
36:44New packaging, how about a new name?
36:47By 1963, grocery stores across the country begin carrying boxes of Santa's product, with a new and improved name.
37:00Santa rebrands from Brown Swiss to Swiss-mas, evoking this alpine village.
37:07You're out in the cold mountains, and you just want a cup of hot cocoa.
37:11And Switzerland's known for their high-quality chocolate.
37:14It's like you've got this perfect name on this perfect format.
37:20Genius.
37:21And the single-serving size is great for this increasingly industrialized, rapidly-moving society.
37:28You don't have to cut anything, you don't have to measure anything, you don't have to carefully calibrate everything.
37:34It's a game-changer.
37:36Many Americans' first taste of hot cocoa comes courtesy of Santa's breakthrough product, which is an immediate hit.
37:44He's not going up against the chocolate syrup or against a bottled chocolate milk beverage.
37:50Swiss-mas is super successful.
37:51He was able to corner the market and create his own place in the hot cocoa aisle.
37:58But its success quickly inspires imitators.
38:03Less than two years after the launch of Swiss-mas, Hershey releases a hot cocoa mix of their own.
38:10But Swiss-mas is the only one that you still make with hot water, not milk.
38:14We're still ahead of everyone.
38:16But for how long?
38:18Faced with new competition from one of the biggest names in food, Charles Santa will scramble
38:24to revamp his product with one last innovation that propels him to the top.
38:33By the early 1960s, Natale Olivieri has turned his pioneering idea into a wildly successful brand,
38:42with Yoohoo sales up and down the East Coast at an all-time high.
38:46So now that Yoohoo has done all that Olivieri hoped for it and more,
38:52he decides to sell Yoohoo for a million dollars to an advertising executive named Max Geller.
38:57A million dollars back then is $10 million today.
39:01Olivieri takes that money, and he retires to Florida with his wife.
39:05Shortly after the sale, Yoohoo's new owner strikes a major distribution deal with PepsiCo,
39:11finally turning Yoohoo into a global brand.
39:15Olivieri's dream is finally realized.
39:17It's a national brand and a household name, and he's enjoying it all from Florida.
39:22Yoohoo will eventually be bought by Keurig Dr. Pepper
39:25and sell roughly 100 million bottles a year.
39:30Yoohoo defined a happy childhood.
39:33Hands down, my favorite beverage on the planet.
39:36It was a regionally beloved thing that became a nationally beloved thing
39:40that became a food product that changed the food landscape forever.
39:48Meanwhile, Charles Sanna is desperately trying to fend off his new competition.
39:54We have to do something to set Swiss Miss apart.
39:56At this point, the hot cocoa market's starting to get really saturated,
40:00with companies like Nestle, Hershey, and even Carnation.
40:02Look at cereal.
40:05They're all doing something different.
40:08Colored loops, chocolate puffs, little marshmallows.
40:15He gets really fascinated by Lucky Charms and how appealing it is to children.
40:21It sparks this realization that there's a whole market that they're missing out on.
40:27While mass-produced bags of marshmallows from brands like Kraft began appearing in stores in the late 1950s,
40:35Swiss Miss becomes the first instant hot cocoa powder to include dehydrated marshmallows in 1972.
40:44Marshmallows added a whole new dimension to the hot cocoa experience.
40:49The first time you opened it up and you saw those little suckers just bobbing around,
40:53and some of them would melt and make this kind of vanilla foam on top.
40:58It was essentially something great becoming even greater.
41:02The moment they added the marshmallows to their hot cocoa mix,
41:05all the competitors started doing the same exact thing.
41:07But because they were first, they ended up standing out and became,
41:10and still are the number one hot cocoa mix in America.
41:14With more than 50 million boxes of Swiss Miss sold each year,
41:18today the global chocolate powder drinks market is valued at roughly $3 billion.
41:25Swiss Miss is definitely still a pantry staple to this day.
41:29There are other competitors, but I would say it's the iconic hot cocoa brand.
41:34As for the world's best-selling chocolate syrup, Hershey's,
41:38after launching their iconic squeeze bottle in 1979,
41:42they've become part of the roughly $10 billion a year global chocolate syrup market.
41:49There would be no Frappuccino, no products that we know and love today,
41:53without a syrup like Hershey's syrup that could be easily introduced to beverages.
41:59Drinking chocolate, whether it's something enjoyed cold like a Yoohoo or a cup of cocoa from Swiss Miss,
42:07a delicious chocolate shake with Hershey's syrup,
42:10suddenly you had this way to consume chocolate that had never been seen before.
42:15And by making it more affordable, more user-friendly,
42:18more people get to experience these flavors.
42:21It's a drinkable, edible manifestation of joy itself.
42:26What do you see at the moment without having a drinkable taste?
42:26I hope so.
42:27Thank you for your time.
42:27You're welcome.
42:27Bye.
42:27Bye.
42:28Bye.
42:28You
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