Original subtitles

- Previously, on The Food That Built America:

food pioneer, Henry Heinz,

brought his iconic tomato ketchup

to the world.

- We're wiring this back here, starting today.

- And revolutionized the industrial process,

creating an American dynasty.

And shrewd visionary, Asa Candler...

- I'll give you $300 for the rights to Coca-Cola.

- Turned John Pemberton's formula

for Coca-Cola

into the first national soft drink,

becoming the richest man in Atlanta.

Now, trailblazer Milton Hershey...

- Damn it!

- Get out.

- Bets on an unknown luxury

called milk chocolate to make his fortune.

- Make sure every sales manager

has plenty of samples.

They're gonna need 'em.

- It's the start

of a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

A father and son duo named Frank and Forrest Mars

create an iconic candy of their own.

- I call it the Milky Way.

- And they're gunning for Hershey's throne.

- Hershey isn't our supplier.

They're our competition.

- C. W. Post used the ideas

he took from John and Will Kellogg

to launch a cereal empire.

Now the brothers go to war with Post and each other.

- I'm gonna bury you.

- But it's Post's daughter,

teamed with outdoorsman, Clarence Birdseye,

whose bold vision will reinvent the way the world eats.

- Very, very good; very, very good.

- Will Kellogg has spent a year

building his new corn flake company.

- For decades, he toiled in the shadow

of his famous older brother, Dr. John Kellogg.

- John Harvey Kellogg had this great reputation.

Not always a lecturer and a doctor,

but he wrote best-selling books.

And so, tens of thousands of people per year

came from around the country and around the world

to meet the great Dr. Kellogg,

and to learn how to be healthy from him.

- The only reason you work here

is because you're my brother.

- But he never missed a moment to humiliate

or razz his brother.

- You're not capable!

- Will's cereal brand is growing quickly

thanks to the family name his brother made famous.

- Will Kellogg bought the recipes from John Harvey Kellogg

and he added a little bit of malt sugar, not a lot,

and he would put his name, his signature on it,

and so, it became Kellogg's.

Will had to know that the name Kellogg

was very marketable because of the doctor.

- By 1907, he makes $178,000 in profit,

nearly five million today,

and he pours almost double that amount

into making the name of Kellogg synonymous with corn flakes.

- W. K. had a brilliant mind.

He had business savvy.

You know, "Only look for the box with my signature."

The marketing of these things, genius.

- The most important thing

for spreading the national brand was advertising.

It's going to change how word-of-mouth comes out

about what type of food you should be eating.

Industries are buying space in magazines,

saying, "Uneeda Biscuit."

Jell-o takes off by advertising itself

as America's most famous dessert.

It wasn't famous at all,

but they started an advertising campaign calling it that

and it took off.

- Will Kellogg, he had all sorts of amazing campaigns.

He had these giant billboards,

the largest billboard of its time

that he put up in Times Square,

similar things in Chicago.

He had a whole campaigns where they suggested to women

that they wink at the grocer and that'd be a sign

to give them the Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

So, there was also sexual innuendo.

He promoted the hell out of it with Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

- By the early part of the 20th century,

food becomes the biggest segment of the advertising market,

beating out cosmetics, tobacco, and automobiles,

with Will Kellogg leading the charge.

Just a few miles away, Dr. John Kellogg

is determined to strike back at his younger brother.

- As Will Kellogg became more successful,

John resented that.

He didn't want his little brother to succeed,

particularly with his name, and his product.

- John markets his own unsweetened Corn Flakes,

using the same name and packaging,

even though he sold the rights to Will.

- When John Harvey Kellogg began

to make his own Kellogg's cereal,

it was a threat to Will's company

because if people confused Will's product

with Dr. Kellogg's product,

which didn't taste as good, he would lose customers.

No wonder Will Kellogg resented John Harvey Kellogg.

He seethed with anger.

- The Kellogg Company will someday

be worth $20 billion.

- The only question is, which one?

- What the hell is this?

I bought the recipes!

- The rights aren't exclusive,

and Kellogg is my last name.

- I have tried with you, John.

I really have,

but if you weren't my brother, I swear.

- You're nothing without my name, and you never were.

You know, I used to pity you.

Now I don't feel anything.

You're pathetic.

- I'm gonna bury you.

- With the Corn Flakes legacy at stake,

John and will sue each other for the right

to the Kellogg name, and the massive fortune it represents.

- Meanwhile, C. W. Post oversees

the dynasty he's built on ideas he took from Kellogg's.

- People forget how much industrial espionage there was.

C. W. Post himself came to the sanitarium as a guest,

and then he creates Grape Nuts.

- By 1908, his company makes

over $5.2 million, 147 million today,

but Corn Flakes represent the first real threat

it's ever faced.

- At this point, Post still was marketing its products

as a health supplement, whereas Will Kellogg

is really selling his flakes as food,

and was enormously successful at it.

- Years after a nervous disorder landed him

at Dr. Kellogg's sanitarium,

the stress of competition is taking its toll.

- Why is it so cold in here all the time?

- Cold?

It's not that cold, sir.

- Right.

Well, you're doing a great job.

Keep it up.

You know.

- Post is a man who has been plagued by illness

throughout his entire life,

and just around the time the companies became rivals,

C.W. Post's health problems start coming back.

- Post, desperate to bring corn flakes

of his own to market,

and his illness makes him increasingly erratic.

- I asked you to produce flakes three-quarters

of an inch across.

This is mush.

- Whether he completely rips it off or not

is another question, but if you think

about C. W. Post's ethics,

he was just like the other entrepreneurs of his time.

He was part of that robber baron generation, after all.

It was a time when ruthlessness was, if anything, admired.

- I want you to find out what equipment Kellogg is using

and who makes it.

Get us whatever the hell he has.

- Yes, sir.

- Wait.

Buy them out.

Order 100 of them if you have to.

I don't want anyone else to get one.

I don't care how much it costs.

Money's not an issue.

- Post Corners the market

on Will Kellogg's proprietary flake rollers,

cementing himself as Kellogg's fiercest competitor.

- 480 miles from Michigan,

a local businessman

is looking for a factory to mass-produce

an entirely new product

that almost no American has ever tasted.

- We're never going to find a perfect space.

- I know.

- We have to make a compromise somewhere.

We've seen every available factory in Philadelphia.

- I know.

- The people who, in my experience,

tend to be innovators

are really kind of maniacal.

They're not your average people.

- Now you're take me to middle of nowhere.

For what, exactly?

- Just hang on, we're almost there.

- The ambition comes from somewhere deep inside

where you think, "I can do this better,"

or "I can find a way to make this process better,

"that product better," and I think that's really

what America's about,

and that has always been the ethos that drives our society.

- This is where I wanna build my factory.

- I don't get it.

There's nothing here, we're surrounded by corn fields.

- They're not corn fields; they're dairy farms.

- He hasn't yet created a product to sell

but he has a dream that will take the world by storm,

and his vision is to build not just a factory,

but an entire town to support it.

His name is Milton Hershey.

- By the early 1900s, the average American worker

makes roughly $400 a year.

- The United States, by 1900,

has the most powerful economy in the world,

and this permanent working-class developed,

and when you walked out each day,

you had money in your pocket,

and so, this all of a sudden meant

that there were people who were gonna find things

for the folks with cash in their pocket

to spend the money on.

- A typical family spends almost a quarter

of its budget on housing,

15% on clothing, and a whopping 45% on food,

creating a huge potential for new products.

- As much as creating successful brands

is about innovation and imagination,

there needs to be an understanding

of the marketplace,

and I think that's the key to real entrepreneurship,

is being able to just see the next step moving forward

and taking that door when it opens to you

and running running through it

when you're not quite sure what's on the other side.

- In rural Pennsylvania

almost 100 miles from the nearest major city

Milton Hershey is gambling everything

on an obscure product he believes is the next big thing,

investing $20,000, more than half a million today.

- Careful, careful.

That wasn't cheap.

- Into equipment to make milk chocolate.

It's virtually unknown in the U. S.

but will someday be sold in 90 countries across the globe.

- It was very popular in Europe,

but here in the United States,

nobody was making milk chocolate,

and when Milton first tasted milk chocolate

at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago,

he recognized that it was special.

- Chocolate consumption dates all the way

back to the ancient Mayans, who would drink chocolate beverages

spiced with chili.

Dark chocolate was common in Europe by the late 1600s,

and in 1875, a Swiss baby formula manufacturer

named Henri Nestle was the first to make milk chocolate.

- We all know the Nestle name,

but what he was really famous for

was he took the water out of the milk,

and then he took the solids that were left,

and he combined it with chocolate.

People craved milk chocolate

because it was more mellow in flavor,

and as far as inventions goes, quite late.

The machine gun had been invented before milk chocolate.

So, just think about that for a minute.

- These are nice.

- Hershey left school in the fourth grade

to help support his family.

After an apprenticeship with a confectioner,

he started his own caramel company,

and in 1900, sold it for $1 million.

- It actually made the front page

of the New York Times when it was sold.

That was enormous amount of money back then,

but Milton Hershey took a risk.

He went and invested his million dollars

into making milk chocolate.

- Hershey buys 1200 acres of farmland

in dairy country, where he'll spend his entire fortune

on building not just a factory,

but a dream to build a utopia.

- Now, these'll all be housing, right?

And then, factory here.

Roads, here?

- Yep.

- These dimensions are fine,

but it doesn't have any personality.

- Personality?

- Hershey had this utopian vision,

this idea that everyone would have things taken care of

for them like plumbing and electricity,

and all these modern conveniences

that workers of the day couldn't even dream of.

These were things that people just did not do

for their employees.

- Since the 1880s

remote industrial operations requiring hard labor,

like coal mines and lumber yards

have been supported by company towns.

- Very often, factories were built

on relatively cheap land outside of cities,

but in those days, automobiles didn't exist

for the most part, or very often,

there weren't systems of urban transport,

so, the workers had to walk to work.

Well, if the factory's outside of town,

then you're gonna have to build some place for them to live

so they can walk to work.

- Company towns are often dirty,

poorly-built, and expensive,

but Milton Hershey is thinking much bigger.

He doesn't even have a product to sell,

but he's already building his ideal town.

- He broke ground on the town

before he ever finalized his own milk chocolate recipe,

which is insane when you think about it,

but that's what he did.

- Yeah, these are boring.

It all feels cheap.

I want people will be happy to work here.

If they're happy to work here,

they'll take pride in their work.

They'll work harder.

- There certainly will be costs associated--

- Fix it.

- Construction will take nearly every penny

of his $1 million investment.

- Now, he has to crack the formula

for milk chocolate.

C.W. Post has bought up all the flake rollers

that Will Kellogg helped design,

and he's using them to crank out corn flakes of his own.

He calls them Post Toasties.

- Will was furious when he found out

that Charlie Post had bought the rollers

for Post Toasties.

Only so many machinists would make these types of product,

which was very smart of Charles Post.

- The genius of breakfast cereal is that you take a product

that costs virtually nothing,

you lightly process corn by cooking it and squashing it,

and then you fill a box with it,

and then you charge an enormous amount of money for the box.

This was not lost on C. W. Post

and that is his genius.

- Post hopes to gain ground

while the Kellogg brothers battle each other.

- Yeah?

- Just a few miles away...

- Okay.

- That fight is over.

After years of abuse...

- You're not capable!

The only reason you work here is because you're my brother.

- Will Kellogg, once his famous brother's lackey,

has triumphed.

Thanks To his brilliant marketing scheme,

the courts rule that Will has sole ownership

of Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

- It was all about who had the right

to use the name Kellogg as a brand name,

and the doctor argued, "I'm Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

"I'm a world-renowned physician.

"I'm the real Kellogg,"

and Will Kellogg mentioned all the advertisements he did,

the millions of dollars he spent,

the tens of millions of people who read

or saw his ads every year,

and he said, "I'm the more recognizable Kellogg."

- All right, thank you.

- And the Michigan State Supreme Court said,

"You know, Mr. Kellogg," not Dr. Kellogg,

"Mr. Kellogg, you're right.

"Your brand name is Kellogg's,

"and that's the recognizable one."

- For John, it's a shocking defeat.

Worse, the court orders John to cover all legal fees

and forfeit all the profits he's made.

- Thank you.

Goodbye.

- It was, in a way, it was trying

to destroy his brother's legacy.

It was grinding him out from the annals of history

so that only the Will Kellogg company would remain.

- John turns his focus back to the sanitarium,

and his groundbreaking research on diet and digestion

earns him a seat on the Michigan Board of Health.

But ultimately, the Battle Creek Sanitarium closes

due to financial difficulties, and John eventually falls

out of the public eye.

- John Harvey Kellogg is a forgotten figure.

A lot of concepts of better eating, and wellness,

and preventing disease were developed by him.

A lot of the food products that we enjoy

were invented by him.

He's just not given credit for it,

and that's a pretty sad story in my view.

- Will's victory over his brother is complete.

Now, he's finally ready to go to war with C. W. Post.

- Will Kellogg hated Charlie Post for stealing his ideas,

and once, somebody told Will Kellogg,

"You know, Charlie Post calls you a dirty dog."

Will said, "Well, you know what a dirty dog does to a post,"

and so, there was a lot of animosity between them.

- Will increases production,

pushing his factory to the Limit.

- No more than usual today.

is this-- - Fire! Fire!

- No, no, no, no!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Get out, everything, the back door.

Everyone out!

Come on, come with me.

- In July 1907,

Will Kellogg's Corn Flake factory burns to the ground,

crippling his operation.

- Do I even wanna know?

- Our stock has been completely destroyed.

There's almost nothing left.

The mixers, they're barely recognizable.

- Damn it.

Well, at least nobody was hurt.

Everything else is just details.

- Yes, sir.

- In the fire that destroyed Will Kellogg's factory,

it also destroyed his rollers.

- No. - You realize that his baby,

his creation, had burned to the ground.

- Will needs to be up and running

as fast as possible or risk losing ground

to his nemesis, C. W. Post.

- But when he orders a new set of flake rollers,

he learns about Post's exclusive deal.

- No, I heard what you said.

I just don't understand it.

I helped you design the damn things.

- I'm sorry, Mr. Kellogg.

I'd love to help you out, but there's no way

we can take any new orders.

- Name your price.

- Can't do it.

Our contract is exclusive, no new customers.

I'm sorry.

- Will was furious when he found out

that Charlie Post had bought the rights

to make rollers for Post Toasties.

It was a malicious idea on Charlie Post's part,

but Will was a very wily guy

who could always get his way out of a problem.

- Wait, you said no new customers, right?

- That's right.

- But I'm not a new customer.

- What exactly is it you have in mind?

- Fix up my rollers, the ones

that went down in the fire.

- He picked the old rollers out of the rubble,

and said, "Your contract doesn't say anything

"about repairing rollers you already made, right?"

So, with this loophole in place,

they would actually not just fix the burnt rollers

but replace them,

and then they sent them by secret along the train rails.

His business almost was ruined,

and it was his ingenuity that saved the day.

- Will takes out the modern equivalent

of $2 million in loans and pours it into construction.

- When Charlie Post heard about it,

he just threw a fit, but it was already too late.

- Why haven't these shipments left yet?

Where are my department managers?

I'm calling a meeting.

15 minutes, boardroom, attendance mandatory!

Back to work.

- He had some type of stomach or gastrointestinal problem

that would cause all sorts of problems

from feeling nauseated to depression,

and what we might call a nervous breakdown.

- You okay?

Sir?

Sir?

- Milton Hershey is doubling down

on milk chocolate, building a factory and a town.

Even after months of failure, trying to crack the formula.

- Milton Hershey was a lunatic.

That was just sort of who he was.

He wasn't afraid of taking risks,

and you know, he believed in himself

enough to think that, "Trial and error.

"I'm gonna get it right."

Probably a lesser person might have walked away from it,

but that wasn't him.

- European milk chocolate uses prepackaged,

condensed, or powdered milk.

- But Hershey believes he can use

the nearly endless supply of fresh milk

from local farms to mass-produce his chocolate.

- The problem is that milk has a lot of water

and chocolate has a lot of rich plant fat, cocoa butter.

You try to mix oil and water,

everybody knows that's near impossible,

and Milton Hershey didn't understand any of this.

Milton Hershey was not a chemist.

He was an experimenter, he was a dreamer,

and he thought it would be a simple process

to come up with his own version of milk chocolate.

- It needs to be creamy, rich but creamy.

- And smooth, you know?

Like, you know there's fresh, delicious milk in there

even if you don't really taste it.

- Got it.

- To help him solve the formula,

he brings in top chemists from across the nation.

- Hey, where'd you say you went to school?

- Princeton undergrad, doctorate at Cornell.

So why are the condensing and mixing so inconsistent?

- I don't know yet, but that's what I'm here to find out.

- I'll stay outta your way so you don't burn it.

- Excuse me?

- Your milk, that's gonna burn.

- I promise you, I know what I'm doing.

- Okay.

Damn it!

I'll need to start a new batch.

I'll try mixing in the milk as it dehydrates.

- Get out.

- I'm sorry, what?

- Just pack your things and get the hell out.

- I think I just let it reduce too far.

If I could have a little more time--

- I'm not paying you to learn on the job.

- In Europe, they use powdered milk.

- I don't wanna hear about how they do it in Europe.

I'm using fresh milk.

Period.

Just go.

- Milton Hershey was so committed

to using fresh milk from the local dairy cows,

and he was doing experiments.

At the same time, he was financing all of this money

that he was putting into this town of Hershey,

and he failed again and again.

And it was very difficult.

He was at the end of his rope.

- Milton Hershey is on the brink of disaster

and he's running out of time.

- Far from Pennsylvania,

the son of a once-wealthy New Jersey family

braves temperatures that reach 40 below.

He's an avid outdoorsman and scientist,

trapping fur and living off the land.

- America as the land of opportunity

is essential to the way that we think

about entrepreneurship and innovation.

The common person could see themselves achieving wealth,

and that is very important.

- His name is Clarence Birdseye.

And here in the frigid Canadian wilderness,

the startling discovery he makes

will give rise to a $220 billion industry.

- Deep in the Canadian wilderness

Clarence Birdseye carves out a life for himself

after his once-prominent family lost their fortune.

He survives on his own making money as a fur trapper

and living much like the Inuit natives.

- Clarence Birdseye was very interested in nature

and he always had a tremendous sense of adventure,

but he ended up dropping out of school

for financial reasons,

but he was one of these kids who just wanted

to take everything apart and see how it worked.

- Birdseye subsists largely

on something most Americans at the time don't eat:

- Frozen food.

- Americans certainly associated frozen foods

with being gross.

It was on the bland side, sort of mushy.

It's not like frozen foods we know today.

- Nobody wanted it because it was terrible.

It was terrible because it was frozen very slowly,

so it was kind of rotting as it was freezing.

It was served in prisons,

but prison reformers complained about it

and tried to stop it from being served there,

and it just was the worst food in the world.

- Frozen food technology

is virtually nonexistent,

barely changed from the ancient Roman technique

of packing food in compressed snow

or in cold cellars filled with ice,

but the local Inuits produce how much better product

using the frigid local temperatures

to freeze fish almost instantly.

- The frozen food that Birdseye ate in Labrador

was really very good,

and so he began experimenting.

- When you freeze something slowly,

you make these gigantic ice crystals inside of the cell,

and the jagged edges of this ice crystal

pierce the cell wall so when it thaws,

all that liquid runs out,

and that's why things look disgusting,

and withered, and shriveled, and devoid of taste.

A fast freeze allows small ice crystals

to create within the cell,

so upon thawing, the cell wall is still intact

and the flavor is still preserved.

- Birdseye figured out that if you freeze fish fast enough,

it's as good as fresh.

- Birdseye realizes

that if he can replicate the fast-freezing process,

he'll be able to apply it not just to fish,

but to every food imaginable.

- Before frozen food, foods were seasonal.

You ate foods that were fresh,

you ate foods that were available at that time of year.

There's not a whole lot of access

to various kinds of vegetables.

- People would often buy fresh meat from butchers

and meat packers, and you end up with meat rotting

and becoming putrid before you eat it.

- Birdseye sees an opportunity

to return to the U. S. and capitalize on a process

few in the world understand,

but the technology to do it doesn't exist.

- Yet.

- Milton Hershey hasn't perfected

his milk chocolate formula.

- Construction on his factory continues,

and now he's doubling down on his gamble.

- Hiring workers and a head of sales

named William Murrie.

- Milton Hershey.

Pleasure to meet ya.

- William Murrie was apparently quite a good salesman.

Hershey's struck by him.

He sees value in him, immediately.

Successful people, I think,

are able to realize their shortcomings

and to find people around them to fill that void

and to make them better.

- Well, heard a lot of good things about you,

so I'm just gonna cut to the chase.

I'll beat whatever you're making now

plus commission on top.

- What's the hook?

- It's milk chocolate.

It almost unheard of outside of Europe,

but once we get people to try it,

they're gonna want more.

It'll sell itself.

- Do you have any product I could take a look at?

- No, not at the moment, but I will.

- You're hiring me to sell something that doesn't exist,

people don't know anything about,

that's also gonna sell itself?

- Is that a problem?

Great.

Happy to have you onboard.

- Looking forward to it.

- Hershey is bleeding money

and if he can't produce a product,

all his dreams will come crashing down.

- Will Kellogg has taken on today's equivalent

of millions in debt, replacing his industrial flake rollers,

and rebuilding his factory.

- When the corn flake factory burned down,

it was very hard to get loans,

and he found one banker who had faith in him.

It was about $100,000,

which was more than $1 million, then,

and it was a very real risk.

- After just six months,

Will Kellogg is back in the game.

- And winning.

- Three shifts of workers

keep the factory running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

- Great, great.

Very good, very good.

- And by 1909,

output of Kellogg's Corn Flakes increases

from 4,000 cases a day to 120,000,

leaving Post Toasties in the dust.

- Meanwhile, C. W. Post slides further

into illness.

- I'm not hungry.

- And steps away from day-to-day operations

at the company he spent his life building.

- I'm going for a walk.

- At that point, he was a very wealthy man,

and spent a lot of time traveling.

I sort of wonder about him being out of touch

with his business, and being, in a way,

forced to relax.

It may have been stress more than anything else.

- Post tries everything from

vacationing in Europe to founding a town in Texas

still named after him.

And trying to irrigate it

by dynamiting the clouds.

But it does nothing to ease his debilitating stomach pain.

- C. W. Post has been plagued by illness

throughout his entire life.

He claimed that Grape Nuts would cure everything

from appendicitis to impotence.

Course, it doesn't cure him, and that's the great irony.

He was one of the richest men in the country,

but despite the money, despite this incredible success,

he's left with the same debility he had

when he entered the sanatorium.

- Suffering more than ever,

Post becomes convinced that he's dying of stomach cancer

and decides to do the unthinkable.

Milton Hershey's factory is nearly complete,

and workers are moving to his company town.

- He spent over 25 million in today's dollars,

and if he can't start making a profit

he'll lose everything.

Desperate to find a formula for milk chocolate,

Milton Hershey calls on a former employee,

an experienced candy maker named John Schmalbach.

- Should it be taking this long to make a batch?

- This is fine.

Just let me concentrate.

- Do you need more equipment?

You know, everybody else brought a lot of stuff.

This doesn't seem like very much stuff to me.

- Shh.

- Right, sorry.

- John Schmalbach, I don't wanna call him a chemist

because he had no formal degree,

but he was one of the people Hershey knew early on

that he trusted.

- It's not perfect, but try it.

Let me know if this better or worse

than what you've been getting.

What do you think's not right about it?

- The texture is good, but there's a little hint

of sourness that we could eliminate.

- No, no, no, don't change anything.

Did you write down what you did so you can do it again?

- Of course.

- What's really kind of amazing is Hershey himself

creating milk chocolate, using these dairies.

I sometimes look at my self, and I go,

"Would I have given up under these circumstances?"

I think that a lot of people in the modern age look

at brands like Hershey's and just think,

"Well, it must have been easy to establish.

"I could be a Hershey's,"

and people don't realize that the risk was massive.

- This is fantastic.

- The formula that Milton Hershey ultimately came up with

had what people called sour notes,

which actually means in his process of condensing,

he soured his milk.

He didn't realize at the time

that his chocolate didn't taste like European chocolate.

He just knew he had a formula that worked

and it was the first in the U. S.

So, we have become accustomed to the Hershey flavor.

Hershey now goes to great lengths

to keep that sourness in the chocolate,

to protect that unique flavor.

- Here.

Here, take this.

Take it, John.

You earned it.

Thank you.

- Hershey pays Schmalbach a $100 bonus

for his contribution.

- But the distinct flavor it produces

will go on to be worth billions.

On May 9th 1914,

national headlines announce the tragic death of C. W. Post.

- Hundreds come to pay their respects

to a Battle Creek legend.

- I'm so sorry for your loss.

- Thank you.

- And mourn the loss of a true titan of industry.

- The idea of the self-made millionaire

was very much an American ideal.

There were the Fords, there were the Rockefellers,

and C. W. Post takes that model and applies it

to a food product.

Without people like C. W. Post,

the American food landscape would look very,

very different than it does now.

- Please accept my sympathy.

- Thank you.

- C. W. Post leaves behind a personal fortune

estimated at 22 million dollars,

the modern equivalent of more than 550 million.

And in a stunning move for the era,

he leaves not just the bulk of his wealth,

but control of his company to a woman:

his 27-year-old daughter, Marjorie.

At the time, less than 20% of college graduates are female,

and women don't even have the right to vote.

- Women had been involved in factories

since the early 19th century,

but they would work for a while,

and then most of them had the idea that they'd get married,

and they'd have children,

and they'd step out of the paid workforce.

You never saw them in positions of ownership

or at the highest levels of corporate management.

- C. W. Post wanted to raise her

like the son he never had.

- It's okay to have fun while you're working.

You look so serious.

So serious, got to...

If it's not fun, you can't do it.

Right here.

- C. W. Post would have his board meetings

and she would be there under the table with him,

and he taught her every aspect of the business.

- The company is struggling in the wake

of its founder's death and now rests in the hands

of an inexperienced young woman,

but her leadership will completely reinvent it.

- For Will Kellogg, the death of his greatest

rival brings an end to his long battle

for cereal supremacy.

- By every imaginable metric, he won.

He beat his brother, and he outpaced C. W. Post,

so that by World War II, the Kellogg's Cereal Company

had 50% of the world's cereal market.

- Today, Will Kellogg's company

is valued at nearly $20 billion dollars,

boasting familiar products like Rice Krispies,

Frosted Flakes, Raisin Bran, even Pop-Tarts,

and Eggo Waffles.

- He created not only one of the major food companies

in the world, but he also created

the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

- Will's charitable organization,

with an $8.6 billion endowment,

still helps disadvantaged children all across the globe.

- Will Kellogg could never imagined himself

as this giant mogul,

but the impact of ready-to-eat cold cereal was enormous.

It was a game changer.

It was the iPhone of its day, if you will.

Everybody wanted some.

So, in a way it was the job Will was born to do,

even if he didn't know it.

- After two years, spent building

his factory and his town,

Milton Hershey is finally armed

with the milk chocolate formula he's been waiting for.

- Let's take a look.

- Wrapped its iconic brown wrapper,

the Hershey bar is about

to take the United States by storm.

- Make sure every sales manager is plenty of samples.

They're gonna need 'em.

- Milton Hershey is the first

to mass-produce milk chocolate,

quickly turning an obscure European luxury

into an American staple.

- Milton Hershey's vision was to give the average consumer

this delicacy once viewed as this thing

for only kings and queens, and on special occasions,

and make it an everyday item for folks in the U. S.

- Sales reach $5 million, 135 million today,

making Milton Hershey a true American chocolate tycoon.

- He's just so fascinating because here's a man

who really was a titan just like the Rockefellers,

and the Carnegies, and the J. P. Morgans,

but instead of having this raw metal or iron product,

his product is chocolate.

- Then, on July 28th, 1914,

simmering unrest in Europe explodes

into the first World War.

Over four bloody years, more than 15 million died.

The United States joins the conflict in 1917,

and resources are quickly diverted to the war effort.

- In May of 1917, Herbert Hoover is appointed

as Federal Food Administrator for the United States.

There was no mandatory rationing,

but Hoover used a combination of propaganda

and peer pressure to really try and coerce Americans

into following these rules,

which included things like meatless Mondays

and wheatless Wednesdays, which are the most famous.

As the war dragged on, they did actually,

formally ration sugar.

- To avoid sugar rationing--

- You draw this?

- Milton Hershey uses a brilliant strategy.

- The char house, here,

the mill, over here.

Fields here, here, and here.

- Opening his own sugar refinery in Cuba.

- These are good.

- Complete with a mill town and railroad.

- Being a visionary,

he realized that there was a shortage,

and he wanted to insulate his company against it.

So, despite World War I,

Hershey profits continue to increase,

in large part because of his venture in Cuba.

- In Europe, the war destroys food production,

leading to shortages across the continent.

- It's a watershed period that transforms the 20th century

into the American century.

In Europe, people are starving,

and that's why the big American food companies join

to help produce more food and have it sent overseas

to our allies.

- The U. S. food industry

expands International shipments,

growing from $190 million in exports before the war

to over 510 million at its height.

When the war ends in 1918,

the United States emerges as an economic powerhouse.

- The destruction took place in Europe.

The construction and the production of all this stuff

took place in America,

so World War I gave the US economy a great shot in the arm.

For the first time, electricity enters homes

all over the country.

For the first time, ordinary people can buy automobiles.

- In this new booming economy

the Hershey company manufactures

millions of pounds of chocolate a year

with sales topping $20 million,

over 250 million today.

And Milton Hershey's best salesman

is now the company's president.

- Milton Hershey had a lot of different interests.

He had a town to run,

so Murrie really the chief operating officer

while while Milton was the C. E. O.

He became Milton's right-hand man.

- The Hershey Company is synonymous

with milk chocolate, with no clear rival.

Then...

- Look how she's looking at you, boy.

She wants you.

- A 19-year-old college student

raised in Canada works a summer job hanging cigarette ads.

- That's it. - I mean, look

at that gaze, man.

- His name is Forrest Mars.

- She's wantin' it.

Ooh, mon cheri.

- And he'll someday rival Milton Hershey

as an American chocolate tycoon,

but for now, he's in the wrong place at the wrong time.

- Forrest wound up getting arrested

because he'd plastered signs up for cigarettes

all up and down State Street in Chicago.

He didn't know anyone in the States at all,

and so he needed somebody to bail him out.

- He calls his father, Frank Mars,

a modestly successful candy maker in nearby Minnesota.

It's the first time they're seeing each other

since Forrest's mother left Frank

when Forrest was a baby.

- He knew absolutely nothing about who his dad was.

He knew his name, but he'd never met him,

and he'd never heard very much about him.

- You're welcome.

- But he reached out to his dad,

and the two of them met under those circumstances

for the very first time.

- After his first company failed

Frank's new business, the Mar-O-Bar Company

is a local hit, selling candy mostly in Minneapolis.

- That's a pretty nice shirt.

- Yeah, things are good.

Who doesn't like chocolate candy, right?

- Yeah, everybody likes chocolate.

So, how come I haven't seen any of your stuff in Chicago?

- Well, different markets, different tastes.

- Yeah, sure, because nobody eats Hershey bars

in California, right?

I mean, take these malts.

People drink these across the country.

So, why don't you just make a chocolate bar

that tastes like a malted milkshake?

No, I'm serious.

- There wasn't a candy bar business at the time.

There were a lot of chocolate bars out there,

but the idea of the candy bar being the staple of candy

was really something that was very different,

and that got Frank Mars thinking.

- Forrest's simple idea will give rise

to one of the most popular candy bars in the world,

launch a $35 billion empire

and rip his family apart.

- In the wake of World War I,

the US economy continues to boom,

ushering in the Roaring '20s.

- But by 1920,

consumerism really sets in, in American life,

and there is a demand to have the latest,

to have the best, to have the flashiest,

the notion of conspicuous consumption,

we're gonna consume stuff to show the world that we can,

that we can do this.

- Fueled by this new spirit of consumerism,

groundbreaking new products flood the market,

including the vacuum cleaner, the washing machine,

and the wireless radio.

- Marjorie Post recognizes the opportunity

in this new age.

Not content to be a wealthy cereal heiress,

she has a vision of transforming her father's company

into something much bigger.

- It was a time when women were not serving

as chairman of the board.

A lot of the business decisions that she made

were done privately in her home.

In those rooms in this magnificent Tudor mansion,

she worked and had a lot of influence

to move this company forward.

- We would be irresponsible not to anticipate

the impact on our business.

We need to take care of everything that we...

- Sorry to keep you waiting.

I figured this would be more comfortable

than the board room.

- Young lady we're very--

- Miss Post.

- Miss Post.

- Years before major food conglomerates

are common, Marjorie directs her company

to snap up well-known brands,

like Maxwell House coffee,

Log Cabin syrup, Jell-o,

and Hellmann's mayonnaise.

Expanding from a cereal company

to a food juggernaut.

- Marjorie was very strategic and a visionary,

just like her father was.

She is the reason why the company

became the success it is.

- That will be all.

Let's get moving.

- Sales skyrocket,

and by 1927, profits reach $13.6 million,

over 200 million today.

- And she isn't finished expanding.

- By 1927, Clarence Birdseye is back

in the U. S. with a vision to freeze food

in a way that will open up a world of new possibilities.

- Frozen food defies nature.

Food technology and science take over

and make things available that people have never seen

at different times of year, in different places

Now food isn't confined by geography anymore.

That idea of totally exploding space and time

is kinda mind-boggling if you really think about it.

- But he has a problem.

- A process for freezing food as fast

as Labrador's negative 40 degree temperatures doesn't exist.

- At the time, you had drying food and smoking.

Then you had pickling, and then you had canning,

but frozen food, nobody had done that.

He takes the idea that he had observed

from the First Nation people in Canada,

and develops a company he thinks is really gonna take off.

- Birdseye raises the modern equivalent

of 5.5 million in capital,

and consults with freezer manufacturers

and engineers working to build

a proprietary quick-freezing system from the ground up.

- He hadn't yet entirely figured out

the fast-freezing process that would work,

but he was willing to take tremendous risks,

and he was taking everything he had

and staking it on some crazy company.

- That is the low convection pump?

- I think so.

- What does that mean?

- This is all your design.

It's only called that

because that's what you wanted to call it.

- Just keep building it, 'kay?

Follow the schematics as best you can.

- Birdseye's brilliant design

is called multi-plate freezing.

Two metal plates are cooled to 50 degrees below zero,

then food is loaded into a pressurized container

and held between the plates,

freezing them almost instantly,

locking in nutrition, taste.

Today, the frozen food industry

is worth more than $220 billion worldwide.

- And is one of the biggest segments

of the grocery market,

and it all starts here, with Clarence Birdseye.

- You know, Clarence Birdseye

used this inspiration to revolutionize frozen food.

Really, frozen food has made the lives

of parents and people on the go so easy, myself included.

My favorite recipe in the world is my mom's spinach pie

and it calls for Birdseye frozen spinach.

I probably have two boxes of spinach

in my fridge, right now.

- And that was one, two, three, four, five,

six of those.

Yeah, just keep stacking 'em, there.

If that gets filled up, just fill 'em in, here.

Come on in.

- Clarence Birdseye is so convinced

he's found the next big thing

that he immediately ramps up production.

- Back up there, if you would, guys.

Yep.

If we're running out of space, we can go back, okay?

- Even though in 1928,

fewer than one in 10 Americans even has a refrigerator.

- In Minneapolis,

after years of estrangement, Frank and Forrest Mars

work together on an idea that'll launch an American dynasty

for one of them.

It's a candy bar meant to taste like a malted milkshake.

- Just take a bite.

- I'm not in this alone.

- All right.

- No. - You sure?

- No, it's not a milkshake.

- It's not bad, though.

- Yeah, but remember, we're going for a milkshake.

Do we have any more?

- Yeah, we got some more.

- Frank Mars was trying to understand

how he could make this work.

- How 'bout this one?

- Finally, after many failures,

he tried a mixture of eggs, and milk, and sugar,

and whipped it all together,

and he added malt flavor to it.

And ultimately, he developed the nougat center.

- The brilliant recipe uses light, creamy nougat

and caramel...

- Covered in a thin layer of milk chocolate.

- That's a keeper.

- Revolutionizing the candy bar.

- The thing that Mars discovered is that

when you're taking nougat and you're whipping it

to make it soft and light,

you're reducing the actual ingredients in the candy bar

'cause there's a lot of whipped air inside,

and it makes them actually cheaper to make,

because air is free.

Spot on.

- In order to mass-produce his new invention

Frank Mars needs a steady supply of milk chocolate,

and by the late 1920s,

there's only one place to get it.

- It's perfect.

No, it's absolutely perfect.

It's happy, it's bright.

Puts you in a good mood when you look at it.

- At the time, there was only one real master

of the universe when it comes to chocolate

in the United States, and that would be Milton Hershey.

He defines the space.

- The Hershey Company was providing ingredients

and finished chocolate products

to a lot of other manufacturers,

and it became a big part of the Hershey business.

In fact, everybody knows Oreo cookies,

but they probably don't know

that the original chocolate flavor in Oreos

came from Milton Hershey.

- What, you don't have phones

out there in Minnesota?

- Well, call me old fashioned, but I prefer

to do business face-to-face.

- It's a long way to come for a short conversation.

Look, I read your proposal,

and I respect your dedication,

but I just can't take that kind of risk.

- I get it.

I don't know that I'd take a risk on me either,

but I'm not asking for a lot,

just a modest line of credit on your chocolates

so I can expand production

on this.

I called it the Milky Way.

- The Milky Way will someday generate

more than $100 million in yearly sales,

but for now, its fate rests in the Hershey Company's hands.

Frank Mars is in enemy territory

determined to walk away with the milk chocolate he needs

to create a candy empire of his own.

- I'm not asking for a lot, just a modest line of credit

on your chocolates, so I can expand production

on this.

I call it the Milky Way.

Give it a try.

- Not bad. - See what I mean?

Irresistible. - Tell you what.

Why don't I bring this by Mr. Hershey.

- That's all I ask.

Appreciate it.

- Frank Mars went to Hershey and he asked William Murrie

if they would become his supplier.

At the time that he requests their assistance,

he isn't a huge success.

He is an unknown from Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

- William Murrie recognizes Mars as a threat

and goes to Milton Hershey hoping to nip it in the bud.

- Try this.

It's a combination of whipped nougat,

caramel, and milk chocolate.

Have a bite.

- I'm all right.

- He wants to buy chocolate from us on credit.

I think we should look into buying this.

We'd be eliminating a competitor

and expanding our product range.

- A competitor?

There's no one in our league.

What markets is he in?

- His hometown, Minneapolis.

- So, he's not much of a threat.

Give him a line of credit if you want to,

and if you're worried about this guy

suddenly getting too big, make an exclusive deal.

We're his only supplier,

we get a piece of the action no matter what happens.

Happy?

- Milton Hershey and William Murrie took a risk

in deciding that they would also support Frank Mars.

I don't think they had any idea what they were getting into

at the time or certainly didn't understand

the incredible success that Frank Mars would find

with his candy bars.

- Instead of eliminating a rival,

they're helping it grow.

- Clarence Birdseye has raise $375,000

to start his business.

- Nearly five and a half million today.

- Is that it?

- Go get it on the truck before it thaws.

- His groundbreaking technology freezes meat,

fish, fruits, and vegetables.

He even experiments with aligator and whale.

The problem is nobody's buying any of it.

- The problem with frozen food was that nobody had freezers.

People didn't have freezers in their home.

Stores didn't have freezers.

Trucks and trains didn't have freezers

for transporting frozen food.

- There have to be major changes in American society

before refrigeration or freezing really comes

into everybody's homes.

You can't have a refrigerator without electricity.

- By the mid-1920s,

almost half of American households

still don't have electricity.

And the icebox, a simple cupboard

with a block of ice at the bottom

is what most Americans use to keep food cold.

The electric refrigerator was invented

more than a decade before, in 1913,

but they're expensive and slow to catch on.

Clarence Birdseye is bleeding money

and has yet to make a single dollar of profit

on his frozen food.

With a clever plan to use Hershey's chocolate

as a coating, Frank and Forrest Mars

quickly grow the Milky Way from a local hit

to a national brand.

- The greatest thing about the Milky Way

was that it looked enormous next to the nickel Hershey bar

because sat up high, and it looked twice as big,

but it was also a nickel.

So, people thought, "My God,

"there's so much more value.

"I'm gonna buy a Milky Way."

- Within two years of its invention,

sales of the Milky Way reach $800,000,

the modern-day equivalent of 12 million.

- But a power struggle is brewing

between father and son.

- Forrest takes credit for this invention

telling everyone that it came from his meeting with his dad

when they had this little conversation

in the diner that afternoon in Chicago.

He was eager to take credit for anything

that his father did.

That was just in his nature.

He was very, very driven.

- Got you a little something.

- Nice.

Thank you.

- You don't like it?

- No, it's a nice shirt.

I just don't think I get it.

- It's the same one that you liked

that day we had the malteds, remember.

- It's my way of saying I'm proud of you.

Look around.

This is everything I've ever wanted

and you are a part of it.

- But I don't want a shirt.

I want to be put in charge of the East Coast division.

- But we don't have an East Coast division.

- No, exactly.

You're acting like we've won,

and we're not even in the game yet.

You wanna win?

You have to start thinking bigger.

Hershey isn't our supplier.

They're our competition.

- Forrest pushes his father toward all-out war

with one of the most powerful food empires

in the country.

- In 1927, Hershey's sales of raw milk chocolate

to third parties are spiking,

accounting for over 20% of their revenue.

Hiding an attack from their biggest challenger,

right in plain sight.

- Hey, do I have to give you a raise?

I'm looking at these numbers.

This is a ton of raw products.

You must be selling around the clock.

- Well, I'll take the money if you're offering,

but that's just for one account.

Okay, I take back the raise.

Where's this all going, it looks

like enough for a small country.

- Minneapolis.

Frank Mars.

- Mars was Hershey's biggest customer.

Mars Candy Company represented a huge part

of Hershey's sales.

Few people understand that two companies

that we see today as enormous competitors,

that if you look back in their history,

cooperation started it all.

- Mars.

Right.

- Threatened by the Milky Way's success...

- It's bitter.

- Hershey immediately starts

innovating new products,

touching off years of one-upsmanship with Mars.

- The ones on the right have a little more

of a roasted flavor.

Think they might go well with the milk chocolate.

- Hershey introduces Hershey's syrup,

and the iconic peanut-filled Mr. Goodbar,

while Mars introduces a bar with Neapolitan-flavored nougat

called The 3 Musketeers,

and a version of the Milky Way with peanuts

he names the Snickers bar.

- Frank has a favorite horse named Snickers,

and they name their third chocolate bar Snickers

after their horse.

I always wondered if Snickers loved peanuts

because that's one of the main ingredients

in a Snickers bar.

- I think we can mass-produce it very quickly.

- Like Hershey's doing?

- Well, we have to compete.

- There's a mutual a history here.

If it wasn't for Hershey giving Mars chocolate,

he might not necessarily have become this enormous success,

and you have to look at both companies

as a single story that's built the candy industry

in America.

There's a lot of mutual connection here

that people don't understand.

- Mars sales balloon to the modern equivalent

of more than $460 million a year

while Hershey's sales skyrocket

to more than 600 million, keeping him in the lead for now,

but the fight is far from over.

Shoulders back for me.

Let's strike here.

Tilt your head slightly, breathe in.

Breathe out.

Perfect.

Marjorie Post's plan

to build a food conglomerate is working.

Her company is worth almost three billion in today's dollar.

She's one of the wealthiest women in the country,

and owns lavish estates all across the nation.

- She built a home in Palm Beach, Florida by the sea

called Mar-a-Lago.

Eventually, she would sell the property to the government,

and then the government eventually sold it

to our current president of the United States, Donald Trump.

- But Marjorie isn't satisfied,

and she has her sights set

on a struggling new business

that's nearly out of cash but will

someday be worth $1.3 billion.

- 'Kay, so, it's these two,

this one, and that one.

- Clarence Birdseye's flash frozen food business

has yet to turn a profit.

- Let's keep it movin'.

- And he needs an influx of cash

to keep it afloat.

- Keep 'em on the table, okay?

Thank you.

- Hello, I'm looking for Clarence Birdseye.

- What can I do for ya?

- Tell him Marjorie Post is here to see him

about a business opportunity.

- Post?

You mean, Post, Post?

Wow.

Well, my name is Clarence Birdseye.

Nice to meet you.

Come on in, I'll show you around.

This is our freezer.

I can already freeze more haddock

than the fishermen can catch.

I can do fruits, vegetables, meat, anything.

The problem is, I can't ship it anywhere.

Most trains don't have freezer cars

and even if they did--

- There's no way for people to keep it frozen at home.

- Exactly.

So, for now, all our sales are local.

Folks let it thaw and eat it the same day.

- And who are your biggest competitors?

- I'm not sure I have any.

- None?

Come on, who else is doing this?

- No one.

The whole process, top to bottom,

everything from the equipment to the packaging,

it's all proprietary.

- And who controls the patents?

You?

- All 200 of them.

- Marjorie Post was the very savvy business person

who went around acquiring interesting food companies.

New England was her turf and somebody told her

about this guy who was doing frozen fish in Gloucester,

and she went and checked it out,

and she thought, "This is an idea with a future.

"I think we'll buy it."

- Let's say I wanted to make you an offer.

What would it take to buy all of them?

All of this?

Your problem is distribution.

You said it yourself.

Without the money behind you,

you'll never be able to build the infrastructure

to turn this from a local curiosity

to a profitable national business.

That's what I can offer.

Name a price.

I'm not leaving till you give me a number.

- 12 million.

- For everything?

- For 75%.

- I'm not interested in owning three-quarters of anything.

How much for the rest?

- I'm willing to do it for another 10 million.

- So, 22 altogether?

I'll have the paperwork sent over in the morning,

and you'll stay on as president of the division

to run things under our umbrella, on salary,

if that works for you.

- Yeah.

Yeah, it works.

- Good.

Well, congratulations.

- Convinced that frozen food

is the way of the future,

Marjorie Post make the biggest gamble of her life:

buying Clarence Birdseye's struggling company

for the modern equivalent of more than $300 million.

- A lot of people felt that they had overpaid

for the company and it was actually investigated

in the Senate.

Marjorie Post was asked why they spent so much

for this kinda crazy frozen food thingy.

The total assets were a fraction of what they paid,

and they said, "Well, we weren't paying

"for the frozen food.

"We weren't paying for the freezers.

"We were paying for the patents."

- Clarence Birdseye is now rich

beyond his wildest dreams, but no less determined

to make the company he built into a success.

- Marjorie Post renames her company General Foods

and uses her enormous resources

to help Birdseye pioneer frozen food from coast to coast.

- He worked with a refrigerator company

on a design for a store freezer that had a window

in the top so you could look in and see what was there.

They got stores to get in on this experiment.

They didn't make they buy the freezers.

They installed the freezers for free.

And this opportunity turned up

a tremendous amount of publicity.

- Today, frozen food is the second biggest seller

in grocery stores around the world,

and Birdseye still leads the pack,

owning a third of the frozen vegetable market,

more than any competing brand,

making Clarence Birdseye the first true titan

of frozen food.

- When you look at any of these innovators,

there's a certain kind of drive and personality

you need to have in order to be this successful,

but if you have that sort of perseverance

and you know you've got that personality

to carry something through, it could lead

to, I mean, ridiculous success.

- Marjorie Post is the most successful woman

of her day, and a business tycoon

decades ahead of her time.

- Marjorie Merriweather Post, in her day,

was the world's wealthiest woman

and she was a icon and a advocate for women.

She, in her own right, was a leader

and someone that other women really did look up to.

- Led by brilliant industrialists

like Marjorie Post and Clarence Birdseye,

the 1920s are a time of unparalleled wealth

and technological advancement,

but what no one realizes is that it's about

to come to a crushing end.

On the next episode of The Food That Built America:

Mac and Dick McDonald design a new system

that turns their restaurant into an assembly line...

- Start working!

- That will generate untold wealth

for an ambitious salesman named Ray Kroc.

- The American people will never forget the name McDonald's.

- A Mars family power struggle...

- This is my company!

- 30% or I walk out that door.

- Leads to an unlikely alliance.

- Mars and Murrie.

- It has a ring to it.

- And the creation of an American empire.

And a visionary Southern maverick--

- You're gonna wanna see this.

- Carves out an iconic legacy at all costs.