A wealthy 89-year-old artificial sweetener tycoon who made Sweet’N Low a household name has committed suicide by jumping out of his Park Avenue apartment block, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Donald Tober, CEO and co-owner of New York-based Sugar Foods with 1,400 employees, jumped dead just after 5:00 a.m. on Friday and was found in the courtyard of the luxurious Upper East Side building between 65th and 66th Street , the sources said.
He struggled with Parkinson’s disease, the sources said.
At the helm of Sugar Foods, Tober turned the company’s flagship, Sweet’N Low, and its ubiquitous little pink packages, into a mainstay on kitchen and restaurant tables across the country, along with Sugar in the Raw and N’Joy non- dairy products. creamer.
“In fact, we’re concerned about everything around the coffee cup,” Tober told Restaurant News in 1995. “We are very focused.”
In the mid-1990s, about 80 percent of catering establishments used Sweet’N Low; the sweetener also controlled more than 80 percent of the sugar substitute market, Restaurant News reported.
“Donald IS Sweet’N Low,” Sugar Foods president Steve Odell told the magazine.
“Don has 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 to a single sales pitch that he probably made or at least had a share in. “
Odell told The Post that he was Tober’s business partner for 51 years.
“He was bigger than life,” said Odell. He made everyone feel special – everyone. He is an icon and he always will be. “
Tober fought a “devastating” disease, “especially for someone as active as he was,” added Odell.
Still, the suicide was a shock.
‘I talked to him yesterday and certainly not. There was no indication whatsoever. “
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Tober was a former president of The Culinary Institute of America and a founder of City Meals-on-Wheels.
He was the husband of Barbara Tober, who worked for three decades as editor-in-chief of Brides magazine and former chairman of the board of the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan. The couple lived on the 11th floor of the building.
Although it stopped distributing Sweet’n Low 15 years ago, Tober’s company currently manufactures a range of sweeteners and other products for supermarkets and food service industries under the N’Joy and Blue Diamond lines.
“It was much more than just one product,” said Odell. “Thousands of people per second use our products.”
He added: “Donald has left us eight words, and we live them every day. The first two words are “Be prepared.” The second is ‘Show up’. The third two words are ‘On time’. And the last two are ‘Follow through’.
“He did that every day, all day during his career.”
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods