Sweet’N Low Magnate Commits Suicide By Jumping From NY Park Avenue Apartment

The wealthy Sweet’N Low creator, Donald Tober, committed suicide by jumping from his Park Avenue apartment, Fox Business reports.

Tober, 89, had Parkinson’s disease. Around 5 am Friday, he leaped to his death and was found in the courtyard in the luxury Upper East Side building.

Tober was the CEO and co-owner of the New York-based Sugar Foods, which employees 1,400 employees.

He is known for turning Sugar Foods flagship product, Sweet’N Low—and it’s infamous pink packets—into a household name found on kitchen counters and restaurant tables all over the country. This also includes Sugar in the Raw and N’Joy non-dairy creamer.

In 1955, Tober told Restaurant News, “Basically, we’re concerned with everything that surrounds the coffee cup. We’re tightly focused.”

By the mid-‘90s, well over half of the foodservice businesses used Sweet’N Low. The product also commanded over 80% of the sugar substitute market.

“Donald IS Sweet’N Low,” the president of Sugar Foods, Steve Odell, told the magazine.

“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.”

Tober and Odell were business partners for 51 years.

“He was bigger than life. He made everybody feel special — everybody. He’s an icon, and he’ll always be,” Odell said, adding they Tober was fighting a “devastating” disease, “especially for someone as active as he was.”

But still, his suicide came as a surprise.

“I talked to him yesterday, and certainly, no. There was no indication whatsoever.”

Tober was a Harvard Law School graduate and a chairman of The Culinary Insititute of America. He also founded City Meals-on-Wheels.

He’s survived by his wife Barbara Tober, who worked for 30 years as editor-in-chief of Brides magazine.