Everyone knows what their favorite Hershey’s product is, but there are a few things that you might not know about Milton Hershey’s company—a.k.a., the company behind beloved candies like Almond Joy, Heath, Reese’s, Kit Kat, and more.
1. The Hershey Empire is build on a fourth-grade education.
The Hershey family moved around a lot when Milton was a kid, which meant that he frequently changed schools. After Hershey finished the fourth grade, his parents decided that it was time for the young man to learn a trade. He began an apprenticeship with a printer but hated it, and in 1872 he began working for a confectioner in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
2. Milton Hershey’s first love was caramel.
In 1876, Milton Hershey went to Philadelphia and used what he learned as a confectioner’s apprentice to start his 1st business, Crystal A. Caramels. When this venture failed, Hershey found another apprenticeship in Denver. After regrouping out West, he started a second company in New York City, which also failed. Hershey then returned home and turned his third venture, the Lancaster Caramel Company, into a global juggernaut with over 1400 employees.
3. Milton Hershey became interested in chocolate after the 1893 World’s Fair.
It wasn’t until 17 years after he opened his first failed caramel company that Hershey became interested in chocolate making. While attending the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Hershey was so taken with the display of German chocolate production that he bought the exhibit’s machinery after the exposition closed. The next year, he opened the Hershey Chocolate Company back in Lancaster. The new venture was such a success that in 1900 Hershey sold his caramel company for $1 million to devote himself to chocolate.
4. Hershey’s once made gum.
Milton Hershey wasn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with rival companies.
When he believed that Beech Nut Gum was going to start making chocolate to put him out of business, he put his cousin Clayton Snavely in charge of buying the equipment and gathering the know-how to get his company’s gum off the ground.
Hershey’s “Easy Chew” was introduced in 1915, but Hershey had trouble getting sugar and chicle (a natural gum) due to import restrictions placed on non-essential products. Easy Chew last appeared on store shelves in 1924.
5. No one knows how Hershey’s KISSES got their name—not even the company.
Hershey’s KISSES hit the market in 1907, and the Hershey Food Corporation holds the trademark for the word, but don’t ask what the name means—Milton Hershey took that secret to his grave.
According to one timeline, “A popular theory is that the candy was named for the sound or motion of the chocolate being deposited during manufacturing.”
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