Raised in rural central Pennsylvania with no formal education, Milton S. Hershey, as a teenager took on a four year apprenticeship to a candy maker in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Then in 1876 he attempted to start his own candy business and failed despite the 6 years of hard work he put in to it.
Then he moved to Denver and began working with a confectioner who taught him how to make caramels using fresh milk. Moving to New York City he started up a second candy business. It also failed.
A true entrepreneur, Milton brushed off the failure and returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and tried again to make a go of the caramel business. This time it worked. He became extremely successful.
The Lancaster Caramel Company was shipping all over the U.S. and Europe, employing up to 1400 people. It wasn’t long before he became one of the area’s leading citizens.
Milton Hershey became fascinated with the art of chocolate making and purchased German chocolate-making machinery exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He bought the equipment for his Lancaster plant and soon began producing chocolate coatings for his caramel and a variety of chocolate creations.
For years he worked at perfecting a viable recipe for making milk chocolate. The Swiss had closely guarded their secret of making milk chocolate. Finally he hit upon the right formula of milk, sugar and cocoa that allowed him to realize his long held dream of mass producing and distributing milk chocolate candy.
Now what had been a luxury for the rich only, could be enjoyed by any one who could afford a Hershey Bar.
Hershey sold the Lancaster Caramel Co. for $1 million in 1900 in order to concentrate exclusively on his chocolate business. Three years later, he returned to Derry Township, where he was born, to build a new factory. There he could obtain the large supplies of fresh milk needed to perfect and produce fine milk chocolate.
In 1903 he began construction on what was to become the world’s largest chocolate manufacturing plant. The facility, completed in 1905, was designed to manufacture chocolate using the latest mass production techniques. milk chocolate quickly became the first nationally marketed product of its kind.
Tags: chocolate bars, chocolate candy, hershey bar, milk chocolate
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