US confectioner Milton Hershey built a sweets empire on caramels and chocolates

Milton Hershey founded a chocolate empire after having success with caramels.

Milton S Hershey with a young child from his orphan school in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in the late 1930s.

ALTHOUGH he was already a wealthy man, the moustachioed confectioner from Pennsylvania was always looking for something new. On a visit to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 he found it while wandering the various exhibition stands.

German chocolatiers, the Stollwerck Brothers, had built a temple of chocolate nearly 12m tall and were demonstrating the latest in chocolate-making equipment and chocolate vending machines.

It was more than enough inspiration for Milton Hershey, who had made his fortune with caramels, to sell up his candy concerns and create what would become a chocolate empire. Hershey overcame a lack of formal education but he came back from bankruptcy to build the company that is one of the world’s biggest chocolate manufacturers.

Milton Snavely Hershey was born 160 years ago today, on September 13, 1857 in Derry Township in Pennsylvania in the US. His father Henry was a farmer, but also something of a dreamer, moving the family around pursuing various business ventures and opportunities. But his schemes never came to fruition because Henry lacked the drive to make them happen.

Hershey’s mother Fanny was the daughter of a Mennonite minister who believed firmly in a strong work ethic and valued personal success. Eventually she grew tired of Henry’s schemes and living in poverty, so the couple separated. Fortunately, young Milton inherited enough of his father’s entrepreneurial spirit while being schooled in hard work and tenacity by his mother.

The separation put an end to Hershey’s formal schooling and at 14, he was apprenticed to a printer. But he found the work dull and was sacked when he accidentally dropped his hat into a printing press. Although the printer was prepared to give him a second chance, his mother and grandfather felt it would be better if he did something he was passionate about. He had once told them he would like to make sweets and so in 1871 they found him an apprenticeship with a confectioner in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Hershey's chocolate bars in Chicago, Illinois.

Hershey Kisses move along the production line at the West Hershey plant in Hershey.

In 1876 he felt he had learnt enough under his employer to set up his own business. He borrowed money from an aunt, moved to Philadelphia and opened his own candy shop. Working hard to make the shop a success, he was confounded by his well-meaning father who sold him the patent for a new kind of candy cabinet. In 1881 Hershey was declared bankrupt, so he went looking for ways to improve his skills and his products. He went to Denver, working for a confectionery company where he learnt their process for making caramels from fresh milk.

After moving around the country he went to work at Huyler’s, a large restaurant and candy store chain in New York. In 1883 he opened another business in New York but in 1886 he had to close its doors. He moved back to Lancaster to try again, this time focusing on his caramels.

His Crystal A Caramels were a hit with the public but he came close to losing his aunt’s house, as collateral on a loan, before a major order for caramels from an English importer helped save the business. The business expanded to Chicago in 1892 and in 1894 he incorporated the Lancaster Caramel Company.

But he believed he had already seen the future at the 1893 Chicago Exposition so he set up the Hershey Chocolate Company as a subsidiary. He would later tell people “caramels are just a fad but chocolate is a permanent thing.” After visiting the expo he bought some of the machines on display and began producing chocolate coatings for his caramels.

In 1898, on a trip to New York, Hershey met 26-year-old Catherine “Kitty” Sweeney in a candy shop. They had a whirlwind romance and were married in May 1898.

Meanwhile Hershey’s company developed its own chocolate recipe as well as a process for mass-producing chocolate. The first Hershey Bars rolled off a production line in 1900, making what was once a luxury item more widely available. He sold his caramel company for US$1 million and in 1903 he began building a huge chocolate factory near his birthplace at Derry Church, Pennsylvania. The town’s name was changed in 1906 to Hershey.

In 1907 he introduced Hershey’s Kisses, small individual conical blobs of chocolate and, in 1908, an almond bar.

Hershey and Kitty were unable to have children, so in 1909 he established the Milton Hershey School for orphans. He and his wife became close to the children at the institution. In 1912 they were booked to travel on the Titanic but cancelled at the last moment, surviving the disaster. But Kitty died in 1915 from a disease of the nervous system.

Hershey never remarried but continued to build his chocolate business. When he died in 1945 he left the bulk of his fortune to the orphan school he had founded.