It is nothing new that the food industry seeks to replace more expensive ingredients with cheaper ones to maintain their margins. The news is that one of these industries recently announced a reversal in this process. The Hershey Co. decided to modify the recipe on a portion of Reese’s and Hershey’s products.
The change is the latest chapter in an ingredient dispute, sparked by a grandson of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup creator Brad Reese, who accuses the company of cutting costs by sacrificing ingredient quality. Grandson of the inventor of the traditional American candy Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, he condemns the replacement of milk chocolate with “compound coatings” and the use of “peanut butter-type creams” in place of peanut butter itself.
According to the company, this review involves changing a coating made with chocolate compound, within a plan to return to “classic milk and dark chocolate recipes” across the entire Reese’s and Hershey’s portfolio by 2027. The movement towards the exclusive use of pure chocolate will reach less than 3% of items in the Reese’s line and only a minimal fraction of Hershey’s products.
“Today, Reese’s identity is being rewritten, not by those telling the brand’s story, but by formulation decisions,” he wrote in an open letter released in February.
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Kirk Tanner, CEO of Hershey, said the choice to review ingredients was made shortly after his arrival at the helm of the company last summer and long predated Brad Reese’s public complaints.
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“As soon as I joined the company, we took a deep look at our entire portfolio,” he said in an interview last week.
“We are going to make small investments to truly align the portfolio with what the brand promises,” said Tanner. “Having consistency is essential for the brand as a whole.”
Today, classic Hershey’s chocolate bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups use pure milk and dark chocolate. The changes will affect some mini cups and special-shaped versions of Reese’s, the Reese’s Fast Break bar and certain Reese’s-shaped products wrapped in metallic paper.
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At the same time, Hershey is also reformulating the Kit Kat recipe to obtain a creamier chocolate flavor and maintains its plan to eliminate all artificial colors from its products by the end of 2027.
Not Brazil
The chocolate won’t run out. “But there are things that need to end: that which is not even chocolate and is sold at a very cheap price, in which the producer, our health and the planet pay the bill, “yes, it has to end”, the statement is from Estevan Sartoreli, co-founder of Dengo.
In an exclusive interview with From Zero to Top, the entrepreneur spoke about the ‘wave’ of chocolate flavor that caused industries to replace cocoa with other ingredients to make products cheaper.
