The Hershey Company

Date Founded: 1894

Industry: Confectionary

Corporate Headquarters: Hershey, Pennsylvania

Type: Public

Overview

The Hershey Company is a global confectionary company headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It is the largest manufacturer of chocolate and non-chocolate snack food products in North America. Best known for producing an array of famous candy bars—including Hershey’s Chocolate Bars, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Kit Kats—the Hershey Company owns and markets more than eighty brands worldwide and earns approximately $10.4 billion in annual revenues in 2022. The Hershey Company was first founded by entrepreneur Milton S. Hershey in 1894. In relatively short order, he transformed what began as a simple chocolate company into one of the most successful and recognizable corporate entities in American history. Along with his namesake company, Hershey also founded the town of Hershey and turned a large tract of countryside into a community for his growing workforce of dedicated employees. In addition to being an entrepreneur, Hershey was a distinguished philanthropist who most notably created the Milton S. Hershey School in 1909. The school, which focuses on providing educational opportunities for underserved children, still plays a significant role in the Hershey Company’s operations. The Hershey Trust, a charity that Milton Hershey himself established to ensure perpetual funding for his school, owns a controlling interest in Hershey shares and, therefore, largely dictates the company’s direction. In its modern history, the trust’s biggest goal was to protect the Hershey Company’s stability by broadening its focus to include not only its traditional candy products but also a wide range of other snack food products.

History

The Hershey Company was founded in 1894 by Milton Hershey. Born in Derry Church, Pennsylvania, on September 13, 1857, Hershey got his start in the confectionary business when he became an apprentice to a candy maker as a young man. Hershey eventually opened his own candy shop in Philadelphia in 1876 when he was just eighteen years old. Six years later, Hershey closed his shop and traveled to Denver, Colorado, to apprentice with a caramel manufacturer. Having learned the ins and outs of caramel making, Hershey subsequently returned to Pennsylvania in 1886, and there founded his first confectionary company, the Lancaster Caramel Company. While attending the Chicago International Exposition in 1893, Hershey became interested in German chocolate-making equipment on exhibit there and decided to experiment with being a chocolatier. This fateful decision led him to found the Hershey Chocolate Company the following year. After selling his caramel company in 1900, Hershey began to focus exclusively on making chocolate.

Within a decade of its creation, the Hershey Company quickly blossomed and began to outgrow its original Lancaster home. In need of space for expansion, Hershey looked to his hometown of Derry Church and there broke ground on a new and larger chocolate factory in 1903. Ultimately, however, he did much more than just construct a factory—he also laid the foundation for an entire town. Seeking to establish a community instead of just a workforce, Hershey oversaw the development of a comprehensive local infrastructure that included housing, education, entertainment, and more. In 1906, Derry Church was officially renamed Hershey in honor of its benefactor.

As Hershey the town began to take root, Hershey the company started branching out for the first time. After initially focusing on its signature chocolate bars, the Hershey Company began making a new product called Hershey Kisses in 1907. Other early products included cocoa powder and baking chocolate. Hershey’s first new candy bar, a chocolate bar with peanuts called Mr. Goodbar, debuted in 1925. By this point, the company’s annual profits exceeded $20 million. When Hershey officially incorporated in 1927, its stock was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for the first time. Over time, the company gradually added a plethora of additional offerings to its product line, including Kit Kats, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, York Peppermint Patties, and Twizzlers. Not all of these products were original creations—many came to Hershey through its acquisition of competitors like the H.B. Reese Candy Company. For a time in the 1980s and 1990s, Hershey also expanded in an entirely different direction to become one of the nation’s leading producers of dry pasta before selling that arm of its business off in 1999. Since that time, Hershey has continued to branch out and establish itself as a broader snack food company. One of Hershey’s most notable moves to that end was its 2018 acquisition of Amplify, the parent company of the popular SkinnyPop popcorn brand.

Impact

The Hershey Company’s impact extends well beyond the long line of popular confectionary products it has delighted consumers with for generations. Nowhere has this impact been more deeply felt than in the town of Hershey itself. Milton Hershey’s efforts to build a strong community around his factory led to numerous building projects that transformed the sleepy Derry Church into a thriving American town. In addition to housing, community centers, and other facilities, Hershey’s so-called Great Building Campaign also included the construction of Hershey Park, a recreation area that eventually became one of the region’s largest and most popular amusement parks. Other additions included Hershey Park Stadium, Hershey Park Arena, and the luxurious Hershey Hotel. However, Milton Hershey’s crowning achievement—and the most important component of his lasting philanthropic legacy—was the Milton S. Hershey School. Originally conceived as a school for underprivileged boys, the Milton S. Hershey School continues to provide educational opportunities for all underserved children regardless of gender.

In the years after Milton Hershey passed away in 1945, the Hershey Company continued to carry on his commitment to philanthropy not only on a local and national level but also on a worldwide level. It chiefly accomplished this mission through Nourishing Minds, a global initiative aimed at helping to ensure that children around the world have access to the basic nutrition they need to grow and learn at a healthy rate. That being said, the Hershey Company has also received criticism over claims that their supply chain, as well as that of other major chocolate producers, relied on child labor. These claims first arose in South Africa—where most of the world’s cocoa is harvested—in 2000 and led to a lawsuit in 2015. Although Hershey and other companies claimed ignorance and vowed to address the issue, additional lawsuits related to the matter were subsequently filed in February 2018. In 2022, Hershey faced an additional lawsuit for its failure to disclose high levels of heavy metal in some of its chocolate products.

Bibliography

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