Major American confectioner Hershey signaled a return to its "classic" chocolate formulations after Brad Reese, the grandson of Reese's founder H.B. Reese, challenged the brand publicly, Yahoo! Finance reported.
On Feb. 14, Reese published a scathing open letter on LinkedIn, tagging Hershey's manager of corporate brand and editorial, Todd Scott, and alleging that the corporation had prioritized profits over quality for the Reese's brand.
"Today, REESE'S identity is being rewritten, not by storytellers, but by formulation decisions that replace Milk Chocolate with compound coatings and Peanut Butter with peanut‑butter‑style crèmes across multiple REESE'S products," the open letter read.
On Wednesday, the Philly Voice published an in-depth report on the controversy, noting that the Hershey, Pennsylvania, company had "switched from milk chocolate to cheaper compound coatings for a range of Reese's products and other candies in recent years."
Moreover, Hershey replaced peanut butter with "peanut butter crèmes" in some Reese's products, an ingredient one user on Reddit's r/Candy deemed "thin" and less flavorful.
It was one of those products, a Reese's Valentine's Day heart, that prompted Reese to publish the letter, according to the Voice.
On Feb. 20, The Associated Press reported that Hershey acknowledged recent changes to its formulations, citing "consumer demand for innovation."
Reese wasn't buying it — literally or figuratively.
"It was not edible. You have to understand. I used to eat a Reese's product every day. This is very devastating for me," he told the AP.
Reese's LinkedIn post went viral amid ongoing discourse about declining food quality in supermarkets and restaurants. One user on the social platform X described him as a "nepo baby we WILL be protecting" for insisting that a marketing story "cannot be stronger than the ingredients."
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Save $1,000 this year 💸 A 2024 peer-reviewed study in the journal Foods told a far broader version of that story, one that went far beyond the candy aisle. It found "an alarming decline in food quality" over the past six decades.
The authors cited a "shift from natural farming to chemical farming" and "elevated carbon dioxide" in the atmosphere as potential factors contributing to nutrient loss in their abstract, and they emphasized a "need to improve soil biodiversity and fertility" to address it.
At an appearance in Manhattan on Tuesday, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer Stacy Taffet confirmed changes to Hershey's new formulas but did not acknowledge Reese's letter.
"We're enhancing our KitKat recipe to deliver a creamier chocolate, transitioning our sweets portfolio to colors from natural sources and ensuring that all Hershey's and Reese's offerings are consistent with their brands, classic milk and dark chocolate recipes," Taffet said, per Yahoo.
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