The Hershey Foods Corporation commonly called Hershey's, is the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America as well as the oldest. Milton Snavely Hershey founded a candy shop in Philadelphia, which failed after six years. After trying unsuccessfully to manufacture candy in New York, Hershey returned to Pennsylvania, where he founded the Lancaster Caramel Company, whose use of fresh milk in caramels proved successful (Hershey). In 1900, Hershey sold his caramel company for $1,000,000(Hershey). 1903, Hershey began construction of a chocolate plant in his hometown which later was named after him. The milk chocolate bars manufactured at this plant proved successful, and the company grew rapidly thereafter (Hershey).
While his company was successfully selling sweet chocolate products, Milton Hershey knew that going down the path of creating and selling milk chocolate products would be better. Milton built a milk-processing plant in the year 1896, to be able to create and refine a recipe for milk chocolate candies (Hershey). In 1899, three years later, he developed his own way of making milk chocolate called the Hershey process (Hershey).
In 1907, Hershey introduced "Hershey's Kisses", which were initially individually wrapped by hand in squares of foil, and the introduction of machine wrapping in 1921 made the process easier while adding the small paper ribbon to the top of the package to indicate that it was a genuine Hershey product (Hershey). The product was trademarked three years later and went on to become one of the most successful and well-known products ever produced by the company. Others sucessful products were created soon after such as Mr. Goodbar Hershey’s Syrup , chocolate chips, and the Krackel bar (Birmingham).The creation of these products helped the company maintain its profitability and avoid any worker job losses during the Great Depression