[continued from above]
In 1900, the company began producing milk chocolate in bars, wafers and other shapes. With mass-production, Hershey was able to lower the per-unit cost and make milk chocolate, once a luxury item for the wealthy, affordable to all. One early advertising slogan described this new product as “a palatable confection and a most nourishing food.”
The immediate success of Hershey’s low-cost, high-quality milk chocolate soon caused the company’s owner to consider increasing his production facilities. He decided to build a new chocolate factory amid the gently rolling farmland of south-central Pennsylvania in Derry Township, where he had been born. Close to the ports of New York and Philadelphia which supplied the imported sugar and cocoa beans needed, surrounded by dairy farms that provided the milk required, and with a local labor supply of honest, hard-working people, the location was perfect. By the summer of 1905, the new factory was turning out delicious milk chocolate.
 When I was a kid growing up in Philadelphia, my Dad would take a business trip once a year to Hershey, PA and the Hershey chocolate factory. While he would go to the offices on business, my mother, brothers and sister would tour the candy factory. We would walk through the factory, between the yellow lines painted on the floor, and see all of the workers doing all of the jobs necessary to make a Hershey chocolate bar. At the end of the tour, I remember getting from the tour guide a full size Hershey bar. We would take our Hershey bar over to Hershey Park ( not the Hershey park of today) and have a picnic lunch. Our dessert was a super fresh-from-the-factory Hershey bar! To this day, my brothers and sisters still talk of and tell our children about our trips with Dad and Mom to Hershey, Pennsylvania and our Hershey Bars! ~ Bob from Pennsylvania |
