He turned surplus Army milk powder into a delicious, highly portable beverage.
By Harrison Smith Harrison Smith Obituary writer Email Bio Follow April 3 at 6:38 PM Fiddling at his kitchen stove in the late 1950s, standing over a pot of creamer, sugar, cocoa and vanilla, Charles Sanna — builder of submarines and towering spray dryers — was on the verge of a culinary breakthrough.
Testing his recipe with the help of his five children, then calling on the taste buds of kids at a parochial school in their town of Menomonie, Wis., Mr. Sanna created what became known as Swiss Miss — a powder that, poured into hot water or milk, became a favorite of Antarctic explorers and launched the instant-hot-chocolate industry in the early 1960s.
More than 50 million boxes of Swiss Miss are sold each year. After figuring out how to turn surplus military milk powder into a delicious, highly portable beverage, Mr. Sanna set about bringing the product to market. His brother Tony Sanna gave it the somewhat misleading name Brown Swiss, after a breed of dairy cow — Sanna actually used Holsteins, which produce a higher volume of milk with less butterfat — and the mix found some early success after it was sold to airlines.
The new product was named Swiss Miss, the title of a film by the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. Marketed with mail-order Swiss Miss dolls, it spawned similar mixes by Carnation, Nestle and Hershey. Since 1990, Swiss Miss has been part of Conagra, which says it sells more than 50 million boxes of the cocoa mix each year. Mr. Sanna said the mix’s taste had diminished somewhat through the years, beginning when he switched from whole milk to skim creamer.Charles Albert Sanna was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 9, 1917. Both parents were Italian.
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