For the grandson of the inventor of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, all it took was one bite of a Valentine’s Day Reese’s Mini Hearts to leave him, well, heartbroken.
“It didn’t taste like milk chocolate,” Brad Reese told NBC News. “It tasted 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 flipped the bag over and read the list of ingredients he was, as he put it, “horrified.”
Hershey’s, which makes the beloved butter cups and seasonal spin-offs like mini-hearts, had replaced the milk chocolate with a chocolate-flavored coating “that definitely was not chocolate,” according to Reese.
Make Reese's Great Again
“For most of my life I ate at least one Reese’s Butter Cup per day, and sometimes something seasonal like a Reese’s heart or a Reese’s Christmas tree,” Reese, 70, said. “But this was inedible. I threw it in the garbage.”
Then Reese, who is so enthralled with his grandfather’s sweet creation that he often ventures outside clad in orange and brown Reese’s jerseys, and who for 25 years has used his personal website to promote peanut butter cups and his family history, took a closer look at the ingredients on other Hershey’s candies that descend from his grandfather’s inventions.
“You know the Reese’s Mini Eggs they sell at Easter? No milk chocolate in that,” Reese said.
Same goes for Reese’s Pieces, which were introduced in 1978 but really took off after they were featured in the 1982 movie “E.T. the Extra-Terrestial.”
So Reese posted a link to a letter he wrote to Todd Scott, who does the corporate branding for Hershey’s, on his LinkedIn page. And he revamped his web site, which includes a photograph of a brown baseball cap emblazoned with the words “Make Reese’s Great Again.”
Reese invoked the name of his grandfather, H.B. Reese, who invented the iconic peanut butter cup in 1928 and started a candy company that produced them until 1963, when his sons sold the firm to The Hershey Company.
“My grandfather,” Reese wrote, “built REESE’S on a simple, enduring architecture: Milk Chocolate + Peanut Butter.”
“But 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 cremes across multiple REESE’S products.”
That letter went viral.
“Now everybody wants to talk with me except Hershey,” said Reese. “Nobody from the company has called me.”
'Product recipe adjustments'
Hershey spokesperson Allison Mason insisted that the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups “are made the same way they have always been." But she conceded that, as the company has expanded its “Reese’s product line,” it has tinkered with the original recipe.
“We make product recipe adjustments that allow us to make new shapes, sizes and innovations that Reese’s fans have come to love and ask for, 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 don’t have the milk chocolate designation on the front of the packaging, because the candies actually have a chocolate-flavored coating.
And because the term is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration it can’t legally be referred to as milk chocolate.
Reese said he’s not sure chocolate-flavored coatings are being limited to buttercup spinoffs.
“Now I hear that the butter cups being produced at their factory in Mexico for the European market are not being made with chocolate,” he said. “The people there don’t have the taste history we have here, they don’t know how delicious Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are. How can I promote a product that will be sold in someplace like Poland that isn’t a real Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup?”
“That is not accurate,” Mason, the Hershey spokesperson, said in response to Reese's assertions that the European market is getting a faux butter cup. "Mr. Reese is not affiliated with the Hershey Company. Our iconic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are made with the same recipe.”
One of the reasons candy companies began looking for alternatives to chocolate was because the price of the main ingredient — cocoa — climbed by 136 percent between July 2022 and February 2024, according to UN Trade and Development.
The chief culprit? Climate change that has caused extreme heat and droughts resulting in poor harvests in the so-called “Cocoa Belt” in west Africa, where 70 percent of the world’s cocoa supply is grown, the agency reported.
But since then, Reuters recently reported, cocoa prices have plunged by 70 percent due to falling demand and because candy makers have developed alternatives to chocolate.
Legacy, purpose and peanut butter cups
“I understand why Hershey’s might be looking for alternatives to chocolate, but it doesn’t give them a license to cheapen the product,” said Reese. “They should be creating different candies, not undermining consumer’s trust in an iconic product.”
Reese, who lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, said he was 8-months-old when his grandfather died. He said he had plenty of girlfriends, but never married or had children. He said that after serving in the Army back in the 1970s, he tried his hand at various businesses with mixed success.
“I excelled at failure,” he said with a laugh.
But Reese said he’s always been fascinated by his family history and, after being diagnosed with cancer in 2015, he found his calling along with a feeling of purpose by singing the praises of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to anyone who would listen.
“I really care about this, so that’s why I find it so painful that my grandfather’s legacy is being diminished,” he said.
Will he continue his habit of eating one peanut butter cup per day?
“For now, I’m taking a break,” Reese said.
