The founder of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups is in pieces because of missing milk chocolate

For the grandson of the founder of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, it only took one Valentine’s Day bite of Reese’s Mini Hearts to leave him reeling.

“You don’t taste like milk chocolate,” Brad Reese told NBC News. “It was cheap.”

Reese said he looked at the front of the package and saw the words “peanut butter,” but not the words “milk chocolate.” And when he rummaged through the bag and read the list of ingredients he was, as he put it, “horrified.”

Hershey’s, which makes the popular buttercups and seasonal spin-offs like little hearts, has replaced milk chocolate with chocolate flavors that are “not chocolate at all,” according to Reese.

Make Reese Good again

“For most of my life I ate at least one cup of Reese’s Butter a day, and sometimes something seasonal like a Reese’s heart or a Reese’s Christmas tree,” said Reese, 70. But this was inedible. I threw it in the trash.

Then Reese, who is so impressed with his grandfather’s delicious creations that he often goes out in orange and brown Reese’s jerseys, and has used his website for 25 years to promote peanut butter cups and his family’s history, took a closer look at the ingredients in some of Hershey’s candies from his grandfather’s inventions.

“You know the Reese’s Mini Eggs they sell at Easter? There’s no milk chocolate in that,” Reese said.

The same goes for Reese’s Pieces, which was introduced in 1978 but really took off after being featured in the 1982 film “ET the Extra-Terrestial.”

So Reese posted a link to a letter he wrote to Todd Scott, who does Hershey’s branding, on his LinkedIn page. And he updated his website, which included a photo of a brown baseball cap emblazoned with the words “Make Reese’s Great Again.”

Reese was named after his grandfather, HB Reese, who invented the peanut butter cup in 1928 and started a candy company that produced them until 1963, when his sons sold the company to The Hershey Company.

“My grandfather,” writes Reese, “created REESE’s from a simple, lasting formula: Milk Chocolate + Peanut Butter.”

“But today, REESE’s identity is being rewritten, not by storytellers, but by creative decisions that replace Milk Chocolate with composite coatings and Peanut Butter with peanut butter style in many REESE products.”

That letter spread.

“Now everybody wants to talk to me except Hershey,” Reese said. “No one from the company has ever called me.”

‘Product recipe preparation’

Hershey’s spokeswoman Allison Mason emphasized that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are “made the same way they were.” But he admitted that, as the company expanded the “Reese’s product line,” it stuck with the original recipe.

“We are making product recipe changes that allow us to create new shapes, sizes and new ingredients that Reese’s fans have come to love and request, while always protecting the essence of what makes Reese’s unique and special: the perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter,” Mason said via email.

Mason also confirmed that the Valentine’s Day Reese’s Mini Hearts do not have the name milk chocolate on the front of the package, because the candies are actually chocolate-flavored.

And because the term is controlled by the Food and Drug Administration, it cannot legally be called milk chocolate.

Reese said he’s not sure if chocolate covered berries are limited to buttercup spinoffs.

“Now I hear that the butter cups produced in their factory in Mexico for the European market are not made of chocolate,” he said. “The people there don’t have the flavor history that we have here, they don’t know how delicious Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are.

“That’s not true,” said Mason, the Hershey spokesman, in response to Reese’s claims that the European market was getting a butter cup. “Mr. Reese is not affiliated with the Hershey Company. Our Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are made from the same recipe.”

One of the reasons why candy companies are starting to look for alternatives to chocolate is that the price of the main ingredient – cacao – has increased by 136 percent between July 2022 and February 2024, according to UN Trade and Development.

The biggest crime? Climate change that has caused extreme heat and drought has resulted in poor harvests in the so-called “Cocoa Belt” in western Africa, where 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is grown, the agency reported.

But since then, Reuters recently reported, cocoa prices have fallen 70 percent because of declining demand and because candy makers have created alternatives to chocolate.

Heritage, purpose and peanut butter cups

“I understand why Hershey’s might want alternatives to chocolate, but it doesn’t give them a license to reduce the product,” said Reese. “They should be creating different sweets, not undermining consumer confidence in an iconic product.”

Reese, who lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, said she was 8 months old when her grandfather died. He said he had many girlfriends, but he never married and had no children. He said that after serving in the Army in the 1970s, he tried his hand at different businesses with mixed success.

“I succeeded in failure,” he said with a laugh.

But Reese said she’s always been interested in her family history and, after being diagnosed with cancer in 2015, found her calling and sense of purpose by singing Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups songs to anyone who would listen.

“I really care about this matter, that’s why I find it sad that my grandfather’s legacy is diminishing,” he said.

Will he continue his habit of eating one cup of peanut butter a day?

“Right now, I’m taking a break,” Reese said.