- [Narrator] It's a $3 billion a year industry.
- It's a way to create a special moment
in the mundanity of all the things we eat.
- [Narrator] And over 16 million Americans
drink one every day.
- It transformed chocolate
into something that we've really never seen before.
- [Narrator] But in the 1920s,
the chocolate beverage industry as we know it didn't exist.
- It wasn't as easy as going to the refrigerator
and grabbing a carton of chocolate milk.
- [Narrator] Until three ordinary men.
- What if Hershey's made chocolate syrup?
- [Narrator] Pioneer three iconic products.
- There had never been chocolate syrup in the grocery store.
- They made chocolate drinks a thing.
- [Narrator] Disrupting the status quo.
- He realizes there are no pre-bottled
chocolate milk drinks out there.
- [Narrator] By reinventing how we consume chocolate.
- He envisions a product
that would only have to be mixed with hot water.
- That's really good.
[somber music]
- [Narrator] But they'll face impossible odds.
- I'm done with the chocolate drink.
- If this doesn't pay off, his business collapses.
- [Narrator] And fierce competition.
- First Nestle, now Hershey.
- [Narrator] As they fight to ensure
their groundbreaking creations.
- It's like dessert, but it's drinkable.
- It was pop that top and it's ready to go.
- [Narrator] Will stand the test of time.
- They changed the food landscape forever.
[suspenseful upbeat music]
[eerie music]
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] The first people to consume chocolate
began doing so over 4,000 years ago.
- [Vallery] It's believed that the Mesoamericans
would take cacao beans and grind them into a paste,
and they would mix that paste with hot water and vanilla,
and chili and spices, and they'd brew it.
And you got this frothy drink
for ceremonies and for funerals.
- [Adam] It gave people a profound amount of energy
and good feeling, but didn't taste anything
like the chocolate drinks we have today.
- [Edward] Those original chocolate drinks
are kinda nasty tasting.
You wouldn't look down and be like,
"Ooh, that's hot chocolate."
You'd be like, "Ooh, what's that?"
- [Vallery] And then in Jamaica in the late 1400s,
it's believed that people were taking cacao shavings
and boiling it with milk and with cinnamon,
- And all of a sudden it turns much more palatable.
- And that was one of the first versions of chocolate milk.
- [Susan] By the early 1900s in the United States,
drinking chocolate was primarily made by the well-to-do,
but it was hard to make.
You had to boil down the chocolate.
- It had to be the right temperature.
It had to be the right proportion
of liquid to chocolate.
- You had to hammer away at it until the chocolate melted.
- [Narrator] By the 1920s,
as simple low-cost confections like the Hershey Bar
caused the popularity of eating chocolate to skyrocket.
Drinking chocolate becomes far less common.
And no chocolate drinks
were being produced and sold to the masses.
- Making a chocolate drink wasn't as easy
as going to the refrigerator
and grabbing a carton of chocolate milk.
It was just too much work.
And if you really wanted chocolate,
you could go spend 5 cents
and buy a Hershey's chocolate bar.
- [Narrator] In 1925, the Hershey Company
is the biggest name in American chocolate.
Thanks in part to the latest confection
from their new hire, Sam Hinkle.
- [Beth] Hinkle comes out of Penn State
with a chemistry degree,
and he's working in the lab for Hershey.
- [Vallery] And he developed a winning candy bar
for the company.
It's milk chocolate with peanuts inside.
[suspenseful dramatic music]
Mr. Goodbar.
- [Narrator] While it's an immediate hit,
it won't be Hinkle's most iconic creation.
- These Goodbar numbers are impressive.
- If you have one food success,
it's expected that you're the whiz kid
and you will do it again and again.
So, the pressure's on to keep the momentum going,
- But Hinkle is not satisfied with just another candy bar.
[suspenseful dramatic music]
- Actually, sir.
- [Adam] He sees something different
that he wants to create in the marketplace.
- Everyone is eating Hershey's,
but they're drinking Coca-Cola.
- [Narrator] In recent years,
the popularity of sodas has exploded
with the rise of soda fountains.
- [Erin] The passage of Prohibition
changed the game for soda fountains.
With no alcohol available,
people had to get their drinks from somewhere
and soda fountains were it.
- [Narrator] Over the last five years,
the number of soda fountains in America
has grown from 4,000 to 100,000.
Making everything from root beer to Coca-Cola.
- [Adam] In the 1920s, Coca-Cola is without question,
the largest brand in soda, but most people don't realize
that Coca-Cola was not making most of its money
from individual bottles of Coca-Cola,
but rather by selling the syrup to soda fountains.
And Hinkle saw an opportunity there.
- What if Hershey's made chocolate syrup
to sell at soda fountains?
- [Adam] In the 1920s,
refrigeration was not nearly as widespread as it is now.
So, to make a chocolate shake or a chocolate malt,
most soda fountains make their own syrup,
which is costly and time-consuming,
or they buy from some of the local producers
in Chicago or New York because there was not
a nationally available chocolate syrup on the market.
- [Chirag] At this time,
chocolate syrup isn't really that popular.
It was something that most people
haven't even heard of or tried.
- So, clearly there is a void.
And Sam Hinkle realizes he can use chocolate
to make the next big thing in drinks.
- [Narrator] Over the next few weeks,
Hinkle spends vast sums of company money
trying to create a chocolate syrup
that will meet Milton Hershey's rigorous standards.
- Hershey was really exacting.
He wanted his chocolate to have a certain taste
and a certain texture.
An identifiable Hershey brand.
- [Edward] Hinkle didn't just melt chocolate
because if you're not careful,
the fat and the sugars grain up
and you get this kind of big chocolate mess.
And if you overheated it too much, you could burn it.
So, he was trying to incorporate cocoa powder.
- [Narrator] Hinkle experiments with various amounts
of cane sugar, cane syrup, and water
to create his new chocolate syrup.
[suspenseful dramatic music]
Over the next few weeks,
dozens of samples are rejected by Milton Hershey.
But Hinkle refuses to give up.
[suspenseful upbeat music]
Eventually adding an ingredient
the ancient Mayans also used.
[suspenseful upbeat music]
- He adds vanilla.
[eerie music]
And that was the ingredient
that he needed to tie everything together.
- Mr. Hershey likes it.
I thought you'd be elated.
- Every batch from a few days ago is now like this.
[suspenseful upbeat music]
-There's a layer of mold on it.
- [Beth] There's a host of ingredients in this liquid
that are ready to go bad,
and so this would not be a commercially-viable syrup.
- His product is a failure and he has no idea what to do.
- [Narrator] 160 miles east,
a hardworking soda shop owner named Natale Olivieri
isn't thinking about chocolate at all.
- Olivieri is an Italian immigrant
who came to the United States a few years ago,
and he is desperate to make his soda shop successful.
- [Narrator] But over the last several months,
his shop has been struggling to stand out
from the more established competitors.
- But Olivieri is not giving up on that dream.
- If you enjoyed that soda, here on me.
- If you go to Italy, it's not uncommon
to go to a cafe and seeing different flavored soda syrups
added to carbonated water.
So, Natale Olivieri takes this Italian culinary tradition
and he starts making fruit-flavored sodas.
- Tell your friends.
- And because he sells his sodas in bottles,
his customers can take them on the go,
which was totally unusual for that time.
- [Narrator] Coming in flavors
like strawberry, raspberry and orange,
he calls his line of fresh sodas, Tru-Fruit.
- He's using really great quality ingredients
to make his sodas.
- [Narrator] But he's miles behind the competition.
- One of the biggest fruit-based sodas
on the market at this time was Orange Crush,
which was distributed nationally.
There's also Nehi, which was founded in Georgia
and is rapidly expanding up the Eastern seaboard.
So, it's only natural that he would want
the same thing for his product.
- What can I get you?
- Two chocolate milks, please?
- I only have fruit soda.
You could take it with you.
- [Adam] But there's a problem.
Olivieri's patrons are more in love with chocolate drinks.
In fact, he sees them running across the street
to the soda fountain to get them.
- He sees that there are
no pre-bottled chocolate milk drinks out there.
There's a gap in the chocolate market.
So, he has this light bulb moment
where he decides that he is going to be the one
to fill this gap.
[dramatic upbeat music]
- [Narrator] Olivieri doesn't know it,
but this radical idea will lead to the creation
of one of the most iconic beverages in America,
selling over 100 million bottles a year
and introducing bottled chocolate drinks
to the entire world.
But for now, there's one problem.
- He doesn't know anything about chocolate,
so he has no idea how to execute
the very product he's envisioning.
[bird chirping] [somber upbeat music]
- [Narrator] In 1926, the Hershey company's Sam Hinkle
is scrambling to create a chocolate syrup
that can survive on shelves.
- Are you sure you wanna keep heating it?
- [Vallery] He's gotta heat the chocolate to melt it
and also kill the bacteria
to make sure nothing proliferates,
and we get that layer of mold.
- But there was a lot of challenges
in trying to make syrups.
- Chocolate has a very high fat content,
so it's highly susceptible to scorching and burning.
- If you heat it up too much,
it can alter the taste, it can alter the texture.
So, most people recommend only heating it to 180 degrees.
- You know, above 180 will scorch the cocoa.
- Oh.
Sometimes you gotta try something new.
- [Vallery] But Hinkle wasn't buying it.
He thought it needs to be 212 degrees.
He thinks that with the right formula,
the heat will preserve the flavor,
will preserve the texture, and will kill the bacteria.
- [Adam] But he didn't know if it would work
or even if it was a good idea to try.
- [Vallery] So he heats it, then immediately seals the bottle.
[upbeat music]
And they wait for weeks.
- [Narrator] While Hinkle hopes for the best,
in nearby New Jersey,
Natale Olivieri is desperately trying to make
his bottled chocolate milk idea a reality.
- [Adam] Natale Olivieri envisions
a bottled chocolate milk
you can just have at home and enjoy it
whenever and wherever you wanted to.
But this is a huge gamble
because he's trying to do something
that's never been done before.
It's going to take loads of R&D,
which is gonna take loads of money and loads of time.
So if this doesn't pay off, his business collapses
and right along with it, his American dream.
- [Narrator] Olivieri has worked tirelessly
over the last few weeks, bottling various recipes
in search of the perfect formula.
- [Erin] But eventually he realizes
you can't just bottle chocolate milk and distribute it.
Refrigeration isn't a widespread thing at this point,
so anything you try to do with milk
is going to spoil incredibly fast.
- So, he has to make something
that tastes like chocolate milk, but doesn't use any milk.
- Understand how crazy this is.
He needs to create the essence of milk,
the way it feels in your mouth,
a little bit of the taste that won't spoil.
So, he has to think outside the box.
[suspenseful upbeat music]
And after several rounds of experimentation,
he stumbles on an ingredient called whey.
- [Vallery] Whey is a milk protein that's a byproduct
from making dairy products like yogurt,
which gives us that milky flavor.
- It's an incredible substitute for milk.
- [Adam] Whey has a lower fat content than milk,
and that lower fat content allows his drink
to stay fresher longer.
[upbeat energetic music]
[bottle cap clinking]
But unfortunately for Olivieri not long enough.
- [Narrator] While each batch lasts several days longer
than it would with regular milk,
it's still not completely shelf-stable.
- [Chirag] He spent years trying to get his head out
from under the water and provide for his family.
So, he's obsessed with trying to make this work.
But in the process,
his soda fountain business, it's starting to go under.
And now, he's sitting there wondering,
"Is it time to just throw in the towel?"
[suspenseful upbeat music]
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, the team at Hershey's
has been patiently waiting to see
how their latest recipe has held up.
[dramatic upbeat music]
- [Vallery] When they open the can,
there's no layer of mold.
They've cracked the code.
They figured out how to make it shelf stable
and it's delicious.
- [Narrator] In 1926, Hershey launches
its first ever chocolate syrup in large 18 ounce metal cans,
specifically for commercial use.
- They send their salespeople out to go sell this
to soda shops and even at restaurants.
They can use it for milkshakes or egg creams.
It's a hit and people love it.
- [Adam] A Hershey's syrup is delicious and it is
groundbreaking, because it's a shelf stable chocolate syrup
that can be shipped and sold nationwide.
- [Narrator] Within months, soda shops across the country
are all clamoring for the revolutionary product
from Hershey, Pennsylvania.
But it's not available in stores yet.
Meanwhile, Natale Olivieri is making a big decision.
- I'm done with the chocolate drink.
- [Adam] Olivieri is struggling.
He's moving the needle slightly,
but nothing is really working.
But then he sees his wife jarring up her tomato sauce.
[water sloshing]
- [Erin] After World War I, more and more people
were canning and preserving things at home.
- Why do you heat up the jars?
- It keeps better that way.
- She was using something called the hot fill method.
- [Erin] The hot fill method of food preservation
is heating the interior of a bottle
and also heating the liquid to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit
to sterilize everything in there.
- [Vallery] You're sealing it while it's hot,
so there's no chance for any bacteria
to be in your sealed container.
[suspenseful dramatic music]
- And he suddenly is inspired.
[somber music]
[bright upbeat music]
- [Narrator] Still using his same recipe,
Olivieri experiments with heating and sterilizing
the bottles to make his chocolate beverage shelf stable.
- How's it going? - Let me show you. Here.
This one is from two weeks ago.
[dramatic music]
- It's good. - Right?
- It's the most delicious cocoa flavor
mixed with the smooth milkiness and it's sweet,
and it's like dessert, but it's drinkable.
- [Adam] It might very well save his company,
but very wisely Olivieri realizes
that having a chocolate drink called Tru-Fruit
is weird and a bit confusing.
[classical music]
And then, Olivieri hears one of his wife's favorite songs
called "Indian Love Call."
♪ When I'm calling you
- [Erin] Olivieri hears that line.
♪ And you'll belong to me
And coins one of the most iconic brand names of all time.
♪ Yoo-hoo
- [Narrator] In the late 1920s, Natale Olivieri
has finally perfected a shelf-stable chocolate drink.
He calls it "Yoo-hoo."
- [Chirag] On paper, this doesn't sound like a good name.
It literally tells you nothing about what the product is.
No mentions of chocolate, of milk,
or even of the creamy texture.
- [Vallery] But I actually think it's really brilliant
'cause there's no preconceptions
about what's in the bottle.
It's Yoo-hoo.
- [Narrator] In 1928, Olivieri begins selling
the world's first bottled chocolate drink.
- This was the first time
you didn't have to be in the soda fountains or soda shops
to drink these chocolate drinks.
It was pop that top and it's ready to go.
- [Narrator] While Olivieri's groundbreaking product
tastes like chocolate milk,
the newly established FDA issues a roadblock.
- [Beth] There is no milk product in Yoo-hoo.
- [Erin] So, he actually has to call it a "chocolate drink,"
which is something it's still called today.
- [Narrator] Yoo-hoo quickly becomes a local hit,
allowing Olivieri to begin selling it
all across New Jersey.
- [Erin] People at his shop love it.
Restaurants love it.
Grocery stores love it
because they can store it on their shelves for a long time.
- [Adam] Ultimately, what Yoo-hoo did
was make chocolate drinks a thing.
It's a whole new category.
You can drink it at home.
And for people who previously could only enjoy
the taste of chocolate in a chocolate bar,
now they could drink it.
And when you give people the flavor they want
in the format they want, I mean, that's a game changer.
- [Narrator] The drink's popularity soon spreads
beyond New Jersey and into neighboring Pennsylvania.
[suspenseful music]
[bottle clacking]
- What's that?
- Chocolate drink.
Doesn't come close to what you can get with our syrup
at a soda fountain,
yet this, you can get in a store and drink at home.
[suspenseful music]
- [Vallery] Yoo-hoo, it's being sold directly to consumers.
And Hershey sees that and they think,
"Hey, we want a piece of that market too."
- [Adam] And to do that,
Hinkle wants to expand well beyond the soda fountains.
- What if we sold our syrup in grocery stores?
- They have a winning product
and they know people already love it.
So, they decide in addition to selling it
to the soda fountains,
they're gonna sell their Hershey's chocolate syrup
right to consumers.
- [Narrator] Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars
manufacturing smaller five ounce cans.
In 1928, the first nationally available chocolate syrup
for home consumers hits grocery stores,
retailing for just 9 cents
and coming with a clever addition to the packaging.
- [Beth] Most people had never seen a chocolate syrup
in the grocery store.
People didn't really know
how to make anything with this can.
So, they made the genius move to put recipes
on the back of the label giving consumers usage ideas.
- [Vallery] You could bake with it.
You could put it over ice cream.
You could make a cold chocolate milk.
There's so many options and it's a huge success.
- [Narrator] By 1929, Hershey's gamble
on the home market for their syrup pays off,
pushing their total sales to over $41 million.
- [Beth] Hershey's syrup did for chocolate milk
what they had done for milk chocolate.
They democratized it, they made it available,
and they gave consumers a little luxury at home.
- This revolutionized the way that Americans
could indulge in chocolate drinks.
- [Narrator] Over the next several years,
while Hershey's syrup helps cold chocolate beverages
become more popular,
in Wisconsin, a former naval officer is searching for ways
to help his family's struggling business.
- [Vallery] Charles Sanna, he's a first generation
Italian-American.
He was a lieutenant in the Navy
and his family owns a dairy farm in Wisconsin.
- [Narrator] Founded in 1935 by Charles' father,
Sanna Dairies has produced and distributed milk
across the northern Midwest for over a decade.
But by the time Charles returns from World War II
to take over the business with his brother,
sales have started to nose dive.
- [Vallery] It used to be the milkman
would come and deliver your milk every day.
But now that people have refrigeration,
they're just buying milk less often.
So, Sanna's family dairy farm, they're in trouble.
- [Lloyd] Charles Sanna was very, very bright
and he was constantly trying to figure out
how he can capture more of the market.
- He's not only a military guy,
but has an engineering degree
and realizes sales in fresh milk aren't going so well.
- And he begins to wonder,
is there a way he can create a shelf stable dairy product
that can help his family make a bit more money?
- Shipment's ready to go if you wanna sign off.
- [Narrator] In the late 1940s,
Charles Sanna cracks the code for a groundbreaking product
that would be the first of its kind on the market.
- What's that?
- [Narrator] Instant milk.
- [Charles] Try that.
- [Vallery] This is not powdered milk.
With powdered milk,
you have to let it soak in water for hours
before it's ready to drink.
But with Sanna's instant milk,
you just mix it up and you can drink it instantly.
- [Narrator] But there's a problem.
- It's a bit gritty, don't you think?
I'm gonna get you a cup of coffee.
- [Adam] Unfortunately, his instant milk powder
doesn't really integrate into cold liquid.
It sort of separates and sits on top.
- Grab some cream for you.
[somber music]
[suspenseful music]
[cup clinking]
- [Adam] But when he adds it to hot coffee, it melts right in.
[suspenseful music]
And on top of that, it tastes amazing.
- He drank that coffee and he was like, bingo.
This isn't milk. It's a creamer.
- [Narrator] Sanna doesn't know it,
but his groundbreaking powder will transform
into one of the most iconic products of all time,
sell 50 million boxes a year,
and become the number one brand in its category.
But it won't be as a coffee creamer.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] In the late 1940s,
Charles Sanna has created a groundbreaking product.
- [Vallery] He names it Sanalac.
It's a portmanteau of his last name Sanna
and lac like lactose.
- [Narrator] Marketing his instant milk powder,
as one of the first shelf-stable creamers available,
Sanna secures his first big customer.
- [Vallery] During the Korean War,
Sanna gets a huge government contract
to provide his instant milk to the soldiers.
- [Narrator] In 1950, he begins producing
millions of Sanalac packets for the US military.
And while the influx of government money
keeps Sanna's dairy farm going, there's a catch.
- There was a huge clause in the contract
that he could never under-deliver.
So, the military put huge penalties
if you didn't deliver minimum quantities.
So to be in the safe side,
he produced huge quantities of instant non-fat dry milk.
- [Narrator] While Sanna bets the family farm
on his new product, chocolate milk consumption is surging.
Thanks in part to the National School Lunch Act of 1946,
which subsidized dairy products to boost nutritional intake
and chocolate milk has now become
a popular cafeteria option.
And Sam Hinkle, who is now the number two at Hershey,
is faced with some unexpected competition.
- [Adam] Nestle Quik hits the market in America.
- [Lloyd] Nestle Quik is a shelf-stable cocoa powder
that you can add directly to milk,
and it was a way to make chocolate milk over hot cocoa
at home anytime you wanted to.
- [Narrator] First launched in Europe in 1948
by Swiss food giant Nestle,
their convenient powder becomes a staple
in American kitchens by the early 1950s.
- [Adam] For decades, Hershey's chocolate syrup
is the main way anyone makes chocolate milk at home,
but it requires refrigeration after opening.
But Nestle Quik doesn't need refrigeration at all.
You just add hot or cold milk.
And Hinkle realizes
that this could threaten Hershey's bottom line
and his personal future at the company.
- Gather the development team in the lab.
[phone clacking]
- [Narrator] While Hinkle tries to fend off
Hershey's new challenger,
back in Wisconsin, Charles Sanna's decision
to overproduce Sanalac has come back to haunt him.
- The Korean War ends, the military contract is over,
and now he's sitting on a warehouse
full of dried milk powder that he has to find a home for.
- Today the day we finally bite the bullet
and toss these things?
Can barely move around here.
- [Adam] Sanna's deeply in debt with loads of product
because the government never bought it.
So, he needs to find a use
for this alternative milk product and fast.
- [Charles] What are you doing?
- Kid begged me for a hot chocolate.
- [Edward] Today a lot of people group
all hot chocolate-flavored beverage into one category
and they call it hot chocolate.
But if we want to be very technical,
a beverage made with real chocolate
is called hot chocolate.
The beverage made with powder is
called hot cocoa.
- [Adam] But making it was a lot of work.
The cocoa powder had to be mixed into hot milk.
You have to really watch the temperature
so you don't scald it, burn it, separate it.
- [Lloyd] If you don't stir it enough,
you get a charred material on the bottom of your pan.
And when it does start to boil,
it foams over and makes this huge mess.
- [Charles] Darn it.
I'll go get some towels.
[somber eerie music]
- [Adam] Clearly heating milk sucks.
Boiling a pot of water is a lot easier.
- Sanna knows that Americans have a taste
for chocolate and convenience foods,
but we don't wanna have to boil milk to get our hot cocoa.
- [Adam] And Sanna has pounds and pounds
of powdered milk on his hands.
You just add water and you have milk.
[suspenseful music]
So, he realizes he could take his milk creamer
and make a brand new product.
And unlike Nestle Quik, which needs to be mixed with milk,
Sanna envisions a product
that would only have to be mixed with hot water.
- [Narrator] While Sanna races to repurpose
his instant milk creamer into an innovative hot cocoa mix,
by the mid 1950s,
Natale Olivieri has managed to increase production
for his groundbreaking chocolate drink.
- [Erin] Olivieri struggled to keep this brand afloat
through the Great Depression,
but he is finally able to make the jump
from his garage to an actual factory
where they can manufacture 250 bottles
of Yoo-hoo every single minute.
- [Narrator] With state-of-the-art facilities
in New Jersey and South Carolina,
sales up and down the East Coast
now top 300,000 cases a year.
Yet for all of his success, Olivieri wants more.
- Yoo-hoo is a hit product,
but he doesn't have the infrastructure to go national,
which he desperately wants to do.
- [Chirag] And he didn't have the reach of his competitors
like Nestle or Hershey's.
So, he needs a way to get into the average consumer's eyes
because these competitors were gonna catch up
and with their massive reach, definitely overtake.
- And so, he's looking for ways to sell more Yoo-hoo.
And then one fateful night, he has a chance meeting
with a bit of a celebrity at a country club.
And it'll change the complete trajectory
of Yoo-hoo's future.
[bright upbeat music]
- [Narrator] In 1955,
the fate of Yoo-hoo is at a pivotal crossroad.
- Natale Olivieri is really working overtime
trying to figure out ways to sell more Yoo-hoo
when he has a chance encounter with a baseball great
at a local country club.
The man who said, "It's like deja vu all over again."
Yankees catcher Yogi Berra.
- [Narrator] The winner of the past two American League
Most Valuable Player Awards.
Berra has helped the New York Yankees
win five World Series titles in a row.
- Yogi Berra was a deeply beloved personality
on and off the field.
- [Chirag] Although he plays for the Bronx Bombers,
Yogi lives in New Jersey about 15 miles away
from the Yoo-hoo factory.
And turns out he's been a big fan
of the chocolatey drink for a while.
- [Jason] So, Olivieri thinks to himself,
"Maybe he could be the guy
that could help me sell more Yoo-hoo."
- Nowadays we're used to seeing professional athletes
advertise everything from car insurance
to their favorite cookie.
- [Jason] Back then there's Wheaties.
But for the most part, sports figures,
if they were going to do an endorsement,
it was typically for sports-related goods.
- [Adam] You didn't see a professional athlete
endorsing food products.
- [Jason] But Olivieri is not dissuaded.
And eventually he convinces Berra
to be the face and the voice for Yoo-hoo chocolate drink.
- [Narrator] In 1956, Yogi Berra signs a groundbreaking deal
to become the public face of Yoo-hoo.
- [Erin] As part of his deal,
he gets stock options in the company.
He even gets Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford
to endorse it as well.
And they call it "The Drink of Champions."
And while still not a national brand,
Yoo-hoo quickly becomes
one of the fastest growing drink brands in the country.
[upbeat music]
- [Narrator] While Yoo-hoo gets a much needed boost,
Charles Sanna has cracked the code
for what he believes could be a breakthrough product.
- Charles Sanna figures out that you can combine sugar,
cocoa powder and his Sanalac milk,
and now you have a new product.
Instant hot cocoa.
- It's much easier to work with the Nestle Quik
because you don't need to have hot milk.
You just add it to hot water.
- Whoa.
- [Narrator] While the popularity of
cold chocolate milk has steadily increased
since the end of World War II,
hot cocoa is a different story.
- Hot cocoa still wasn't that widespread of a drink
in the 1950s.
- That's really good.
- [Adam] Sanna's new product was unlike anything on the market.
This was revolutionary.
So, now all he needs is a great name
and he comes up with Brown Swiss.
Ugh.
I mean, either sounds like bad cheese or a bad stomachache.
- [Vallery] He names it Brown Swiss after a type of dairy cow
because they're trying to emphasize the milk
in their product, which is what sets them apart.
- But he doesn't put their product
on the market right away.
- [Narrator] Instead, Sanna comes up with a unique place
to debut his product.
- [Vallery] Sanna has this brilliant idea
to sell his Brown Swiss to commercial airlines.
This was the golden age of air travel
back when they were trying to give you more food,
better food, better drinks.
And to save flight attendants
from having to measure the powder
and mix it with the hot water,
he puts it in pre-measured single serve packets.
- There was no major modern brand
that was doing this until Brown Swiss.
- He made a user-friendly version of hot cocoa.
- [Narrator] In 1956, Brown Swiss becomes
the first instant hot cocoa available
on commercial airlines.
But there's a problem.
- Airlines dropped his product
because there were too many people
stealing the single serve packets.
His product, it was too popular.
- [Narrator] While losing the airline contracts
is a setback,
Sanna sees this as proof that his high demand product
could also do well in grocery stores
with a small but innovative change.
- When he pivots to the grocery store,
he makes these family-sized boxes
of the single packet servings
that he can distribute on a large scale.
- And for the instant powder drink market,
that entire notion was completely novel.
- New packaging. How about a new name?
- [Narrator] By 1963, grocery stores across the country
begin carrying boxes of Sanna's product
with a new and improved name.
[suspenseful dramatic music]
- [Vallery] Sanna rebrands from Brown Swiss to Swiss Miss,
evoking this Alpine village.
You're out in the cold mountains
and you just want a cup of hot cocoa.
- [Beth] And Switzerland's known for
their high-quality chocolate.
It's like you've got this perfect name
on this perfect format.
Genius.
- And the single serving size is great
for this increasingly industrialized,
rapidly moving society.
You don't have to cut anything.
You don't have to measure anything.
You don't have to carefully calibrate everything.
It's a game changer.
- [Narrator] Many Americans' first taste of hot cocoa
comes courtesy of Sanna's breakthrough product,
which is an immediate hit.
- He's not going up against the chocolate syrup
or against a bottled chocolate milk beverage.
Swiss Miss is super successful.
He was able to corner the market
and create his own place in the hot cocoa aisle.
- [Narrator] But its success quickly inspires imitators.
Less than two years after the launch of Swiss Miss,
Hershey releases a hot cocoa mix of their own.
- [Chirag] But Swiss Miss is the only one
that you still make with hot water, not milk.
- We're still ahead of everyone.
- But for how long?
- [Narrator] Faced with competition
from one of the biggest names in food,
Charles Sanna will scramble to revamp his product
with one last innovation that propels him to the top.
- [Narrator] By the early 1960s,
Natale Olivieri has turned his pioneering idea
into a wildly successful brand
with Yoo-hoo sales up and down the East Coast
at an all time high.
- [Erin] So, now that Yoo-hoo has done
all that Olivieri hoped for it and more,
he decides to sell Yoo-hoo for a million dollars
to an advertising executive named Max Geller.
A million dollars back then is $10 million today.
Olivieri takes that money
and he retires to Florida with his wife.
- [Narrator] Shortly after the sale, Yoo-hoo's new owner
strikes a major distribution deal with PepsiCo,
finally turning Yoo-hoo into a global brand.
- [Erin] Olivieri's dream is finally realized.
It's a national brand and a household name,
and he's enjoying it all from Florida.
- [Narrator] Yoo-hoo will eventually be bought
by Keurig Dr. Pepper
and sell roughly 100 million bottles a year.
- Yoo-hoo defined a happy childhood.
Hands down my favorite beverage on the planet.
- [Adam] It was a regionally beloved thing
that became a nationally beloved thing
that became a food product
that changed the food landscape forever.
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, Charles Sanna
is desperately trying to fend off his new competition.
- We have to do something to set Swiss Miss apart.
- [Chirag] At this point,
the hot cocoa market's starting to get really saturated
with companies like Nestle, Hershey, and even Carnation.
- Look at cereal.
They're all doing something different.
Colored loops, chocolate puffs, little marshmallows.
- [Chirag] He gets really fascinated by Lucky Charms
and how appealing it is to children.
- It sparks this realization
that there's a whole market that they're missing out on.
- [Narrator] While mass produced bags of marshmallows
from brands like Kraft began appearing in stores
in the late 1950s,
Swiss Miss becomes the first instant hot cocoa powder
to include dehydrated marshmallows in 1972.
- [Adam] Marshmallows added a whole new dimension
to the hot cocoa experience.
The first time you opened it up
and you saw those little suckers
just bobbing around and some of them would melt
and make this kind of vanilla foam on top?
It was essentially something great becoming even greater.
- [Chirag] The moment they added the marshmallows
to their hot cocoa mix,
all the competitors started doing the same exact thing.
But because they were first,
they ended up standing out and became,
and still are the number one hot cocoa mix in America.
- [Narrator] With more than 50 million boxes
of Swiss Miss sold each year,
today the global chocolate powder drinks market
is valued at roughly $3 billion.
- [Vallery] Swiss Miss is definitely still a pantry staple
to this day.
There are other competitors,
but I would say it's the iconic hot cocoa brand.
-[Narrator] As for the world's bestselling chocolate syrup,
Hershey's. After launching their iconic squeeze bottle in 1979,
they've become part of the roughly $10 billion a year
global chocolate syrup market.
- [Beth] There would be no frappuccino,
no products that we know and love today
without a syrup like Hershey's syrup
that could be easily introduced to beverages.
- [Adam] Drinking chocolate, whether it's something enjoyed
cold like a Yoo-hoo or a cup of cocoa from Swiss Miss,
a delicious chocolate shake with Hershey syrup.
Suddenly you had this way to consume chocolate
that had never been seen before.
And by making it more affordable, more user-friendly,
more people get to experience these flavors.
It's a drinkable, edible manifestation of joy itself.