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Have you noticed how Hershey’s chocolates taste different lately? If you didn’t before, now you do! Today we are talking about candy, chocolate in particular, and why they’ve changed.
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SOURCES: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JBJTeO1ujdFKMH_ahI-ZAGcNYX12eRQh3YHzo4UbfjI/edit?usp=sharing
NOTE: The script for some of this episode is based on a piece that appeared in Sean J. Jordan’s _OPO Insights_newsletter on April 16, 2026.
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
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TRANSCRIPT:
You may or may not be aware of this, but most chocolate candy tastes different now than it did when you were growing up.
It’s not just because you got older and your tastes changed – it’s because the actual ingredients being used to make popular brands such as Reese’s and Kit Kats and other sweets that don’t need to have pure milk chocolate in them have been changed to make the candy more shelf-stable, less prone to melting and, most important of all, cheaper to produce.
And lest you think I’m the purveyor of some great candy conspiracy theory, the person who started pointing this out recently was none other than Brad Reese, the grandson of H.B. Reese, the creator of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
He publicly accused The Hershey Company this year of changing the recipes so much that he alleges modern-day Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are no longer made with milk chocolate or peanut butter, but instead compound coatings and cremes.
The Hershey’s Company has denied that their flagship products are impacted, but admitted that some of the other products branded as Reese’s like FastBreak Bars, Take5 bars or seasonal items like Reese’s hearts no longer use milk chocolate derived from cocoa butter but instead using chocolate-like coatings made out of palm oil and shea oil.
And there’s been such a consumer backlash that they’d pledged to go back to milk chocolate in 2027. At least I think they did – the only sources I can find for this backpedal come from April 1, so I’m wary.
Even so, you now have to be wary when you’re buying any candy that you expect to be made out of actual chocolate – if it doesn’t list “milk chocolate,” “dark chocolate” or “cacao” as one of its key ingredients, chances are good you’re instead buying something that fits under the looser term of “chocolate candy,” which is not regulated by the FDA in the same way.
What The Hershey Company is doing is not uncommon in the world of consumer packaged goods and consumable products – making mass-produced products differently to suit modern market conditions is an age-old tactic that allows brands to cut costs, expand distribution and improve marketability.
But what happens when a company known for making milk chocolate starts making “chocolate candy” instead?
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
OK, so let’s get something out of the way before we dive into Hershey’s, because they are a fascinating company, and also one of those distinctly American companies that Europeans look at with, well… pity, because they can’t believe we eat chocolate that has a sort of rancid, vomity tone to its flavor. This is not in their imagination, by the way – Hershey’s chocolate is made with a low-temperature cooking process that causes the milk solids from fresh liquid milk to break down in a manner that produces butyric acid, which is also found in rancid dairy products and, yep, digestive fluids.
Milton Hershey’s formula that was used to produce his distinct brand of chocolate was also designed to make his product more shelf-stable and less likely to melt or spoil while it was transported to retailers.
And make no mistake about it – Hershey’s chocolate was supposed to look and taste like nothing else because Milton Hershey didn’t want to emulate the chocolates being made by European confectioners. He wanted a brand that people would be able to identify as distinctly Hershey’s, and the entire process, including that tangy, sour, curdled flavor created by the way the dairy products were cooked was part of the experience.
Today, when we have access to a lot of different types of chocolate and we can easily go out and buy high-end confections at just about any store, Hershey’s Milk Chocolate is more of a traditional comfort food brand than a strong preference for most people.
Ask many people what they associate with Hershey’s Milk Chocolate and they’ll probably mention the theme park in Pennsylvania, trick-or-treating, campfire S’Mores or hot chocolate, all things that are associated with the candy but which are not a sign that the bar itself is super popular. Hershey’s Kisses are more popular as seasonal items, for stocking candy bowls, for baking and and for small indulgences; Hershey Bars are really more of an evergreen product that sit on shelves until someone has a craving for them.
Reese’s, on the other hand, are one of the most popular candy brands in the world and certainly the most popular brand of candy in the United States, right above M&Ms. That’s not to say that Hershey’s bars aren’t a popular choice given the right circumstances – data released by both Instacart and Doordash in 2024 both place Hershey Bars in the top 10 for Halloween hand-outs, and Hershey’s Kisses are a top choice for Valentine’s Day, which is, according to Instacart, the second-biggest candy buying day of the year.
But there’s something special about Reese’s. It’s cobranded with all sorts of products including Lunchables and Oreos and Chips Ahoy. It has its own breakfast cereal and ice cream and used to have its own brand of peanut butter! It even has its own line of candy products including Fastbreak, Take 5, Whipps, Cluster Bites, Sticks, Minis, Reese’s Pieces and Big Cup as well as a plant-based variety, a sugar free variety and seasonal products like eggs and bats and trees. Almost all of these, by the way, have bright orange packaging that stands out on the candy shelf. If you’re picking up a Reese’s product, you know what you’re getting in terms of chocolate and peanut buttery goodness.
And Reese’s also gets novelty flavors all the time, including some pretty gross Red Velvet Reese’s Cups I tried around Valentine’s Day and – I never normally do this with chocolate candy – tossed in the trash. Yuck.
Notably, Reese’s is a far more popular brand in Europe, and unlike Hershey’s, they don’t tend to get Europeans to snobbishly describe the candy as tasting like sour milk or vomit. Super sugary, maybe, but not vomit.
Reese’s has been distributed in the United Kingdom in recent years along with Hershey’s by EuroFoodBrands, it’s been available through chains like Hydro Texaco and 7-Eleven as well as import stores, and Reese’s also were successfully pushed into German grocery store shelves in 2021 by The Hershey Company. Reese’s also has a following in Australia where it’s mainly sold through importers or American chains.
So this all begs the question… why would a company with such distinctive brands ever want to threaten the popularity of its products by going cheap on the ingredients?
The answer, it seems, is the rising price of ingredients, particularly cocoa, sugar and milk, all of which are key ingredients for making milk chocolate. Cocoa in particular has risen in price due to climate change, disease and drought, and it’s had a major impact on the chocolate industry as a whole since prices spiked in 2024, leading to a phenomenon called “shrinkflation” where many candy producers have reduced portion sizes or lessened the amount of chocolate in a candy to save on production costs.
The Hershey Company is one of the largest buyers of cocoa in the world and even with their massive economies of scale, a little bit of added cost in the global supply chain can add a lot of pressure onto preserving their profits.
Another way to reduce the amount of chocolate in candy is to use substitutions concocted in a food lab, and this not only takes time and effort, but also tends to be a long-lasting solution. Remember, chocolate made in a factory is not the same as chocolate made with a recipe in your kitchen – to reduce variations in production, everything is carefully managed through a formula process that’s very precise and which is always reliable. Adding in substitute ingredients is a process that isn’t easily undone, and it takes awhile for candy produced using these ingredients to work its way off shelves.
“But couldn’t they just raise prices?” you might wonder. Raising prices lowers demand, and that can harm sales, so a chocolate producer may try other things instead beyond changing portion sizes or ingredients so they can keep their profits up – phasing out products that aren’t selling as well, looking for ways to improve shelf life so products can stay fresh longer or finding ways to repurpose products to open up new sales channels.
For example, The Hershey Company could produce S’mores kits during campfire season to pair Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars with pre-packaged marshmallows and graham crackers. They could sell off some of their unsold inventory in bulk to bakeries or pastry companies to use as an ingredient in other packaged products like pies or cakes. They could negotiate to have Hershey’s candies included in other ready-made products like Lunchables. Or they could even repackage their bars for fundraising and open the candy up to a different market.
But all of this depends on having candy to sell in the first place. And with cocoa prices being volatile and other food prices – yes, even peanuts! – being impacted by the effects of climate change, The Hershey Company likely thought it could use its substitution strategy in some of its branded candy and no one would notice.
Unfortunately, once people did, it became a major topic of discussion, because consumers don’t mind being sold ultra processed candy made in a factory using modern production techniques, but they really, really don’t like feeling like suckers. Or Dum-Dums. Or Goobers or Nerds or Whatchamacallits.
You can pick your favorite candy analogy there. No Snickers from me, I promise.
And so The Hershey Company now has a bit of a marketing problem on its hands, because even if the allegations Brad Reese made aren’t entirely true – it really looks like he was maybe complaining about the Reese’s hearts being made with cheaper ingredients and not the main Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups themselves – a lot of consumers are now questioning if they noticed the difference.
And it bugs them to admit that yeah, no, they could tell something was a little bit different, but it wasn’t a total dealbreaker for them, either, because it wasn’t really the candy they were buying – it was the brand of candy itself that they associated with many positive memories, not the exact flavor.
To which the food scientists at Hershey’s probably would nod and agree that consumers tend not to notice small changes to formula. And we’ve talked about this before with Coca-Cola and Pepsi – they change their formulas from time to time to make up for changes in their supply chains, but what research has shown is that it’s not the actual flavor of the product that people remember – it’s the brand on the outer packaging suggesting to them what the product ought to taste like.
Personally, if I were in The Hershey Company’s shoes, I’d use this increased attention to talk about the products that still do use milk chocolate and real peanut butter and to position them as the real, authentic products that Americans have known and loved for decades. Nothing creates a desire to see an old friend like being reminded that they’re still around, and leaning into the controversy and silencing critical voices with chocolate seems like a winning strategy to me.
Of course, I’ll take the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups over the Hershey’s Bars, thanks, because I do have to agree with our chocolate snob European friends that even when Hershey’s Bars are made with the best possible ingredients, they still have a sour note I’ve never quite liked.
But then, ask my mom what kind of chocolate she wants for Mother’s Day and it’s going to be Hershey’s Kisses without question. Because ultimately, it’s all a matter of taste, isn’t it?
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
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