Hershey's (Company)

For the Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar, click here.

**The Hershey Company**, commonly known as **Hershey's**, is an American multinational company and one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the world. It also manufactures baked products, such as cookies, cakes, milk shakes, drinks and many more. Its headquarters are in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is also home to Hersheypark and Hershey's Chocolate World. It was founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1894 as the Hershey Chocolate Company, a subsidiary of his Lancaster Caramel Company. The Hershey Trust Company owns a minority stake, but retains a majority of the voting power within the company.

Hershey's chocolate is available across the United States, and in over 60 countries worldwide. They have three large distribution centers, with modern technology and labor management systems. In addition, Hershey is a member of the World Cocoa Foundation. It is also associated with the Hersheypark Stadium and the Giant Center.

## History

### Early years

After an apprenticeship to a confectioner in 1873, Milton S. Hershey founded a candy shop in Philadelphia. This candy shop was only open for six years, after which Hershey apprenticed with another confectioner in Denver, where he learned to make caramel. After another failed business attempt in New York, Hershey returned to Pennsylvania, where in 1886 he founded the Lancaster Caramel Company. The use of fresh milk in caramels proved successful, and in 1900, after seeing chocolate-making machines for the first time at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Hershey sold his caramel company for $1,000,000 (equal to $30,732,000 today), and began to concentrate on chocolate manufacturing, stating to people who questioned him, "Caramels are just a fad, but chocolate is a permanent thing."

In 1896, Milton built a milk-processing plant so he could create and refine a recipe for milk chocolate candies. In 1899, he developed the Hershey process, which is less sensitive to milk quality than traditional methods. In 1900, he began manufacturing Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bars, also called Hershey's Bars or Hershey Bars

### Hershey, Pennsylvania

In 1903, Hershey began construction of a chocolate plant in his hometown of Derry Church, Pennsylvania, which later came to be known as Hershey, Pennsylvania. The town was an inexpensive place for the workers and their families to live; however the factory itself was built without windows so that employees would not be distracted. To increase employee morale, Milton provided leisure activities and created what would later become Hersheypark to make sure the citizens enjoyed themselves. The milk chocolate bars manufactured at this plant proved popular, and the company grew rapidly.

### Hershey's Kisses

For the article about Hershey's Kisses, click here.

In 1907, he introduced a new candy - bite-sized, flat-bottomed, conical-shaped pieces of chocolate that he named "Hershey's Kiss". At first they were individually wrapped by hand in squares of aluminum foil. The introduction of machine wrapping in 1921 simplified the process while adding the small paper ribbon to the top of the package to indicate that it was a genuine Hershey product. Today, 80 million of the candies are produced daily. Other products introduced included Mr. Goodbar (1925), containing peanuts in milk chocolate, Hershey's Syrup (1926), semisweet chocolate chips (1928), and the Krackel bar containing crisped rice (1938)

### Unionization

Labor unrest came to Hershey in the late 1930s as a Congress of Industrial Organizations-backed union attempted to organize the factory workers. A failed sit-down strike in 1937 ended in violence, as loyalist workers and local dairy farmers beat many of the strikers as they attempted to leave the plant. By 1940, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor had successfully organized Hershey's workers under the leadership of John Shearer, who became the first president of Local Chapter Number 464 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union. Local 464 still represents the Hershey workforce.

### M&M's

For the article about M&M's, click here.

Shortly before World War II, Bruce Murrie, son of long-time Hershey's president William F.R. Murrie, struck a deal with Forrest Mars to create a hard sugar-coated chocolate that would be called M&M's (for Mars and Murrie). Murrie had 20% interest in the confection, which used Hershey chocolate during the rationing era during World War II. In 1948, Mars bought out Murrie's interest and became one of Hershey's main competitors.

### 21st century

In June 2006, Philadelphia city councilman Juan Ramos called for Hershey's to stop marketing "Ice Breakers Pacs", a kind of mint, due to the resemblance of its packaging to a kind that was used for illegal street drugs.

In September 2006, ABC News reported that several Hershey chocolate products were reformulated to replace cocoa butter with vegetable oil as an emulsifier. According to the company, this change was made to reduce the costs of producing the products instead of raising their prices or decreasing the sizes. Some consumers complained that the taste was different, but the company stated that in the company-sponsored blind taste tests, about half of consumers preferred the new versions. As the new versions no longer met the Food and Drug Administration's official definition of "milk chocolate", the changed items were relabeled from stating they were "milk chocolate" and "made with chocolate" to "chocolate candy" and "chocolatey."

In April 2015, the Hershey chocolate plant on East Chocolate Avenue in Hershey Pennsylvania was demolished to make way for mixed-use development.

A 2016 attempt to sell Hershey to Mondelez International was scuttled because of objections by the Hershey Trust.

In October 2019, Hershey's partnered with Yuengling to produce a limited release collaboration beer titled Yuengling Hershey's Chocolate Porter, becoming Hershey's first licensed beer partnership.

### Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

For the article about Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, click here.

Harry Burnett Reese invented Reese's Peanut Butter Cups after founding the H.B. Reese Candy Company in 1923. Reese died on May 16, 1956 in West Palm Beach, Florida leaving the company to his six sons. On July 2, 1963 the H.B. Reese Candy Company was acquired by the Hershey Chocolate Corporation in a tax free stock-for-stock merger. In 2017 after 54-years of stock splits, the original 666,316 shares of Hershey common stock received by the Reese family represented 16 million Hershey shares valued at over $1.8 billion that pay annual cash dividends of $42 million. In 1969, only 6-years after the Reese/Hershey merger, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups became The Hershey Company's top seller. As of September 20, 2012, Reese's is the best-selling candy brand in the United States with sales of $2.603 billion, and is the fourth-best-selling candy brand globally with sales of $2.679 billion—only $76 million (2.8%) of its sales are from outside the United States market.

### Cadbury

For the article on Cadbury (Company), click here.

In 1988, Hershey's acquired the rights to manufacture and distribute many Cadbury-branded products in the United States (except gum and mints, which are part of Mondelēz International). In 2015, they sued a British importer to halt imports of British Cadbury chocolate, angering consumers. A merger between Mondelēz and Hershey's was considered but abandoned in 2016 after Hershey's turned down a $23 billion cash-and-stock bid.