The Food That Built America

- Over 250 million HERSHEY Bars a year.

More than 650 million bottles of HEINZ Ketchup.

1.9 billion servings of Coca-Cola a day.

Over 300 billion McDonald's burgers sold.

These iconic brands fuel modern America,

helping to drive the most powerful economy on Earth.

But 150 years ago, they don't exist.

At a time of unimaginable change,

it takes brave visionaries risking everything

to create some of the most

recognizable empires on the planet.

I call it the MILKY WAY.

Well that's a first.

It's chaos out there.

Fire, fire!

- Get out everything, the back door!

Start working!

This is a federal seizure.

- Innovators like Henry Heinz, Milton Hershey

and Clarence Birdseye push the limits of technology.

- This is the future and I need it.

- American dynasties like Post and Kellogg's,

battle each other to build their fortunes.

- We should be making stacks of money off of this.

You're not capable.

I'm going to bury you.

- And bold pioneers like the McDonald brothers.

Flip 'em, let's go.

And Colonel Sanders.

Face the challenges

of a cutthroat new era of opportunity.

- Hershey isn't our supplier, they're our competition.

These billion dollar empires

are American icons.

- The American people will never forget the name McDonalds.

- That help transform the country

into the most powerful nation on Earth.

This is the story of how they all began.

It's been ten years

since the end of the Civil War

and one of the most important eras of America's history

is just getting started.

It'll be called the Industrial Revolution,

and it will usher in a wave of unbridled entrepreneurship.

- I look at those early days of burgeoning industry

and I think this is an amazing opportunity, you know?

Who doesn't wanna be successful?

Who does wanna, you know, change the world

and make quite a bit of money doing it?

I think that's the brass ring.

You might come up with this great iconic American brand

and the brand that shapes America.

- Before industrialization, when people live on farms,

they're pretty nearly self-sufficient.

But all the people who live in cities

for the first time in history of the United States,

they've got to be fed by somebody else.

- The Industrial Revolution is a time

when you start seeing factories developing,

but part of that is the phenomenon of urbanization.

People were coming together as a workforce

and living in cities more and more.

Life was changing for people

and it was changing very quickly.

- Nearly a third of Americans flood into cities

without space to grow their own food,

causing a crisis and an opportunity.

- No longer could you go to your hen house, get egg.

No longer would your wife cook you up some fresh chicken

that she just slaughtered on your front porch.

There was this need to sort of feed the masses.

- People were moving to cities from farms in America.

And the mass production of food was very unusual.

In fact, it didn't exist and this was a really big deal.

- In one of the fastest growing cities,

one struggling entrepreneur pursues his ambition

of selling his products all across the country.

But he's about to hit rock bottom.

His name is Henry Heinz.

- Where are the rest of the checks?

The checks, where are they?

Give me half.

Hurry.

Listen to me.

These paychecks will clear but only if they go out today.

You have to get to the post office before it closes.

Pittsburgh Police.

We have a warrant for the arrest of Henry Heinz.

Sir?

- Here, go to the post office, then straight home.

Families are depending on this, do you understand me?

Go.

- On December 15, 1875 local authorities arrest

31 year old Henry Heinz.

A company built on his name will someday sell

for 23 billion dollars.

But for now, after taking out loans to expand production

on his horse radish sauce, he has overreached on a product

that doesn't sell enough to keep it in business.

With every new development,

every innovation in the food production process,

when you're sort of near the cutting edge

of the way things are going, this is the riskiest edge.

- Heinz started buying more and more produce.

He bought out whole farms.

But when creditors came calling, he couldn't pay.

So he was arrested for fraud.

But, it wasn't his fault.

At the time, packaged foods were not commonly eaten

in the United States.

In the late 1800's,

food preservation is still primitive.

Small, local farmers bring their products into cities,

where they sit on shelves or in barrels for days,

or sometimes even weeks.

- The state of food in America was pretty deplorable.

Remember, there's no refrigeration.

Grocers often didn't care

where their products were coming from.

They were selling spoiled meat.

Fish was a little bit off.

When people bought things in barrels,

you never knew what you were gonna get.

- Pickles were colored with copper

to make them look more green.

They'd put laundry bluing in milk to make it look white.

You had to trust your own ability

to tell what was good and what was not.

Most Americans don't trust

the food they're being sold

and Heinz's bold attempt to expand his business

ends in disaster.

- H. J. Heinz found his name in the newspaper

not for a budding entrepreneur, but as a criminal.

This really humiliated H. J. Heinz.

- His parents' home got repossessed.

He had to watch his mother cry as they took furniture

and he had been the root cause of this.

It all exploded.

He failed.

Henry Heinz is ruined

but he's determined to pick himself up and start again

520 miles to the south, in Atlanta, Georgia,

the scars of the Civil War are still raw.

- And tens of thousands of veterans

are dealing with the pain of their injuries.

- Never forget what a horrific experience

that Civil War was for the American people.

It's very difficult to imagine the carnage.

People were suffering.

- Almost all the fighting took place

below the Mason-Dixon Line leaving the South,

and its economy, in ruins.

- The disparity between North and South is huge.

In the South the primary economic driver was agriculture,

and cotton is no longer king.

The war devastates agriculture

and the South's gonna have to reinvent itself.

- In the heart of this unstable environment,

a local entrepreneur struggles to keep his business afloat.

He's a civil war veteran and pharmacist named John Pemberton

- John Pemberton was kind of a creative genius

who is tragic in his own way.

He was never a great businessman.

He would go bankrupt and would start over again.

His signature invention will someday be served

over ten thousand times per second.

But for now, Pemberton works

late into the night, hoping perfect a formula

that'll help him cash in on the latest craze

sweeping the country, miracle health tonics

called patent medicine.

- Patent medicines were very popular

but also fairly adulterated.

The claims of any particular product were outlandish,

claiming to cure everything from tuberculosis to cancer,

to itchy scalp, you know, all on the same product.

- They contain all sorts of toxic chemicals

and substances that you wouldn't even

wash your floor with it, let alone take it or ingest it.

John Pemberton's war wounds

have left him addicted to morphine.

Hoping to create a safer alternative,

he gambles on a plant extract from South America.

For thousands of years, Natives have chewed its leaves,

as part of religious rituals and as a powerful stimulant.

It's called the coca leaf.

The same thing used to make cocaine.

- Cocaine was supposed to be this wonder drug

and nobody recognized its potential harm

or addictive quality.

A wine infused with coca leaf

was wildly successful internationally,

in the 1860s, 70s and 80s.

Everybody drank this stuff,

it was supposed to be a cure-all.

It even had endorsements from three different popes,

including Pope Leo the 13th.

Pemberton hasn't yet perfected

the formula that will someday launch an American empire.