Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Tuesday Tea and Tomes: The Emperors of Chocolate, Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars



Here at BTS, we hold this truth to be self-evident:  the only thing better than reading about chocolate, is eating it. 

"The Emperors of Chocolate, Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars" by Joel Glenn Brenner, serves up a delightfully tasty and fascinating book that details the true stories behind two of America's best known makers of  chocolate bars and the facts aren't always as sweet as the candy they produce.

I was motivated to buy this book after recently watching the History Channel's series, "The Food that Built America" (released in 2019).  Each episode tells the tale of "new" food products created over a century ago with such familiar brand names that, today, it's often lost on us consumers that those eponymous products derived from real people:  Kellogg, Post, Heinz, MacDonald's and, our chocolate makers, Milton Hershey and Frank Mars.

Much like the History Channel's "Men who Built America" from 2012,  which told of groundbreakers of industry including Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller, "The Food That Built America" reveals their  stories with a combination of dramatization of real events and interviews with authors and other subject matter experts.  Here's where I "met" Joel Glenn Brenner and her accounts were  so riveting, that I found I was not only craving chocolate, but her book on the subject as well. 


Brenner was a reporter for the Washington Post in 1989 and was assigned to do a story about Mars, Inc. and their reaction to Hershey emerging as the number one candy maker.  What she discovered through two years of research, was the world of chocolate is more secretive than many government agencies. After Brennan's repeated efforts to get inside Mars, Inc., the executives finally gave in. This resulted in a warts-and-all article of the still family-owned candy company along with  the wrath of the Mars, Inc. who shut their doors permanently to the author in response to such airing of their business.


While researching Mars for the article,  Brennan also hit on a long-ago tie between that company and Hershey and it was clear, the story of chocolate's success in America was due to an early partnership between the two companies.  Although their management style was vastly different, both men took big risks, believed in their products and, through trial and error, launched an industry we take for granted today.

It's also a tale of marketing mishaps and genius.  One of my favorite chapters tells the story of  Reeses Pieces (which I am very fond of, by the way).  After years in development (just to get that peanut butter center inside a candy-coated shell took an incredible amount of time), and favorable results in focus groups, the mini-candies received a sluggish response once on the market. All that changed when a Hershey executive got a call from Universal Studios. They were making a picture about an alien who befriends a young boy. The script called for the boy to lure the alien to his house with M & M's. But, in a colossal error of judgement, Mars, Inc. passed on the opportunity. In exchange for one million dollars, Hershey got licensing rights for its Reeses Pieces. Within two weeks of the premier of "ET",  the sale of the peanut butter treats tripled. Distributors reordered as may as ten times in that same period.  ET phoned home and Hershey collected.

And, yes, the executives at Mars deeply regretted that decision.



Mars, Inc. is still run by descendants of Frank Mars and, through an aggressive play in the global market, eventually triumphed over Hershey as the biggest chocolate maker. But Hershey's legacy has  something Mars Inc, doesn't - a town and a museum, which my daughter, Rachel and I visited in 2014. Here we saw personal artifacts of the Hershey family, including a tea set that belonged to Milton Hershey's wife. Rachel and I also went to candy bar school at Hershey's chocolate lab. (I wish they had a graduate program).





The Emperors of Chocolate, Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars is a fantastic read. It's about the boldness of entrepreneurial skills and all that comes with selling innovation:  ambition, tenacity and ruthless belief in one's creations.  And, when the subject is chocolate, it's as hard to put down as Snickers bar.







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