Leslie and David's Wanderings: 7 September 2022 Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate

Being in Hershey PA, one must visit the Hershey Chocolate plant. Unfortunately, they no longer offer plant tours since they opened the new plant in 1995. Instead, they have the Hershey Chocolate World. We decided to take the trolly tour of the town of Hershey. We arrived early at the Chocolate World and strolled through the extensive store to see what we might be interested in buying. The store is incredible with the selection of Hershey products (IE candy) and themed clothing. There are many Hershey Candy products in the store that we have never seen in the commercial stores. We also noted there is a Chocolate Tour ride that we decided we would do when we returned from the tour. We loaded up on the trolly and we were driven around (in the rain) the town. The guide kept up an amusing commentary the whole ride with facts about the Hershey company, Milton Hershey and his family, and the many things Milton Hershey built and did to support his employees. We learned many things we did not know about Milton Hershey. He failed six times with different candy companies before he succeeded with Hershey Chocolate. We learned about his wife and her early death and how that affected him. Also, about the orphanage that they built together (and is still running to this date) when they found out they could not have children. We learned about how Milton supported his employees during the depression and how he put his own fortune on the line to employ construction workers during the depression. Including a case where he told a supervisor to get rid of a steam shovel and hire more men to do that work. We learned that between the two factories (new Hershey’s Chocolate Factory and the Reeses plant, they turn out over 5 million pounds of chocolate candy a day and run around the clock, seven days a week, 365 days a year! That’s a lot of candy! Milton built the town and plant in this location due to the availability of fresh milk from the surrounding dairy farms. The cost of building the town and the factory here was cheaper than building a plant in a major city and shipping the milk in everyday. He knew that he needed to build a town for the workers to live in in this extremely rural location in 1903, and that good living conditions would ensure good workers.

When we returned to the Hershey Chocolate World, we walked over to the Chocolate tour and walked through the exhibits on how coco beans, sugar and milk are turned into Hershey’s chocolate. At the end of the exhibits is a ride that takes you through a simulated chocolate factory that is a bit hokey. Back at the store we grabbed a basket and went chocolate shopping! Most of it is for other people, but we picked up some sugar free stuff for ourselves.