When Hershey Met America: A Modern Chocolate Love Story
It Started in Chocolate Town
What is the first brand you think of when your hear the word "chocolate"? It's likely Hershey's chocolate. To this day, American chocolate is nearly synonymous with Hershey... but when did this love affair begin?
The scene is set in Lebannon Valley, a picturesque range where hundreds of dairy cows made their homes across thousands of acres of dairy farms. This location where Miton Hershey chose to build the headquarters of his new chocolate empire in the early 1900s was crucial. Not only did it provide constant access to the freshest milk, it also was near enough to the coast to recieve frequent shipments of cocoa beans and sugar necessary for chocolate making. Hershey, Pennsylvannia, fondly referred to as "Chocolate Town," included all parts of a normal town. It had a post offices, grocery stores, parks, malls, and many homes for all of its residents to live in. And at the center of Chocolate Town, was the magnficent chocolate factory.
Not unlike the magic of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, this one factory converted hundredes of thousands of pounds of cocoa beans into 625,000 chocolate bars every day, reaching every part of the nation. The 1930s recipe pamphlet titled "The Hershey Recipe Book" explained two pieces of the state-of-the-art chocolate machinery used to make this delicious feat possible. One was the series of milling machines that ground the cocoa beans into a liquid chocolate liquor using a traditional milling stone called the burr stone, covered in steel. Next, cocoa butter was removed from the chocolate liquor (not to be confused with chocolate-flavored alcohol, chocolate liqueur) using the pressure harnessed from an enormous hydrualic press. These technologial innovations allowed Hershey to mass production of chocolate in a way that had never been seen in American before. As a result, the public's access to and desire for chocolate skyrocketed after the 1930s.
True Loves First Kiss: A Taste for New Hershey's Products
With the mass production of chocolate came a variety of new chocolate products for the American public to fall in love with. Products seen in the 1930s pamphlet "The Hershey's Recipe Book" included Hershey's unsweetened Breakfast Cocoa, similarly marketed as a healthful, coffee-like breakfast drink, Hershey's Sweet Milk Chocolate and Sweet Milk Chocolate with Almonds for eating, and Hershey's Baking Chocolate for baking. Additionally, Hershey's Milk Chocolate Kisses wrapped in their iconic silver wrappers and Hershey's Chocolate Syrup also hit the shelves during this time.
By 1949, Hershey released chocolate chips to grocery stores, calling them "Hershey's Semi-Sweet Dainties." However, before this, Walter Baker was selling its "Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips" as early as 1942. Nevertheless, Dainties and chocolate chips alike inspired a recipe that would become the best milk-compliment (besides perhaps the oreo, a story for another day) of all time: the chocolate chip cookie. Interestingly, the recipe for chocolate chip cookies is listed in the 1949 pamphlet as "Chocolate Town Cookies," referring to the Hershey, Pennsylvania. Otherwise, the recipe resembled a modern day chocolate chip cookie recipe.
In the later half of the 20th century, several other Hershey's products were developed including Hershey's "Instant," a pre-sweetened chocolate powder, as opposed to the unsweetned precursor "Breakfast Cocoa." Additionally, by 1975, unsweetened cocoa powder was simply called "Hershey's Cocoa," as it was no longer marketed solely for the use in drinks and was expanded to use in baking and frosting-making. By 1983, as seen in an advertisement recipe sampler called "7 Great Ways to Make it Chocolate!," Hershey displays Reece's Peanut Butter chips, Semi-Sweet Chocolate chips, and mini chips, in addition to their original milk chocolate chips.