Emperors of Chocolate

I was led to read Joel Glenn Brenner’s book “The Emperors of Chocolate” by a question from my friend Tony. “You’re the kind of person who would know the answer to this. What do the letters M&M stand for on M&Ms?” Finding the answer led me to read a business history filled with quirky characters and fascinating tales.

The book is mostly about a thirty year battle between Hershey and Mars and fittingly, it opens with a war story. The Gulf War, you see, was won by Mars. Hershey got all the publicity with its “Desert Bar,” but lost most of the defense contracts. They went to the company that makes Snickers and M&Ms. Brenner devotes several chapters to this, and makes a good story of it.

Mars, by the way, sounds like a spooky place to work. It was founded by Frank Mars, together with his son Forrest. They built the company up and made a pile of money. But Forrest didn’t care about money. He was an empire builder, and after his father’s death and a fierce takeover battle he wrested complete control of the company. Mars purged his father’s hires, and reshaped the company to his liking. In Brenner’s words:

“Soon after the [victorious takeover] meeting, Forrest ripped out the executive dining room, fired the French chef, tore down the office walls, stripped the oak paneling and sold the art collection, the rugs, the stained glass and the corporate helicopter. He then increased salaries 30 percent, replaced fixed annual compensation with incentive pay and handed each associate a time card. “

Mars is now a huge multinational corporation (they make Pet brand pet foods and Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice, too). Forrest Mars sounds like everyone’s idea of the boss from hell. I got the feeling that Mr. Dithers in Blondie may have been loosely based on him.

Mars is still family owned, and is still a very unusual place. John Mars and Forrest Mars Junior, the sons of Forrest Mars, still punch in at a time clock. Brenner claims that they weren’t allowed to eat M&Ms as children…Forrest said he needed them all to sell. There are no private offices, no perquisites of power, no personal secretaries. Writing memos is against corporate policy. The company demands total dedication (for example, their executives might be asked to take part in a tasting session for their Kal Kan dog food line). The Mars brothers, however, pay about triple what their competitors pay.

I often skip the author’s note at the beginning of a book, but this one is a must read. In it, Brenner talks about how hard it was to do simple research on the chocolate industry. The secrecy surrounding Hersheys and Mars is hard to believe, though not unjustified. Spying on rival techniques and technology is an ancient candy-business tradition. Brenner even digs up a quote from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” about chocolate spies.

Oh, by the way, Mars has its own intelligence division, which sounds in some ways more effective than the CIA, neighbor to the Mars corporate headquarters in McLean, Virginia. In fact, the CIA did some work for the Mars company, probably illegally. It was entitled “Soviet Exports and Imports with Selected Commodities, 1970-79” and was commissioned by CIA Director William Casey, a personal friend of Forrest Mars. The Selected commodities were cocoa beans, cocoa butter, and cocoa liquor.

Milton Hershey, perennial failure until he began a caramel business, even more fascinating than Forrest Mars. He was a dreamer and an idealist, and built Hershey, Pennsylvania as an utopian community. He constructed the city around a vast and beautiful park and provided a trolley network, a giant swimming pool, a Junior College and an elegant marble theater. Workers got generous insurance benefits and retirement plans. The company provided electricity, sewage, and phone service, shoveled the snow and managed the system that removed the sewage. Steam pipes carrying surplus heat from the chocolate factory warmed the municipal buildings.

At one point during the construction of his Chocolatopia he saw contractors building rows of identical houses for the chocolate workers. He screamed “This is the kind of houses they built for slaves!” and ordered them torn down and rebuilt on more individualistic plans.

I was fascinated by Brenner’s story of Hershey’s heroic battle to get milk to mix with chocolate. It reminded me of the mythic descriptions of Edison’s all-nighters trying to perfect the incandescent bulb that inspired me in my childhood.

An even more amazing story is the Hershey Industrial School. This was set up for poor, orphaned boys (it’s now co-ed). The children lived on farms in the surrounding countryside that Hershey built for this purpose, supervised by house parents. They all had to work on the farm and work hard, but they were given an excellent education, good role models and supervision, a rather lavish wardrobe and generous allowances.

Shortly after his wife died, with no public announcement, Hershey left all his money and all his shares in the company to his orphanage, spent his waning years living in two humble rooms in the Hershey Hotel, and died essentially a poor man. The Hershey school is still the principal shareholder in the chocolate company.

Reading Brenner’s description of the taste of Hershey’s chocolate made me curious. “The American public’s love for Hershey’s chocolate baffles European connoisseurs, who say Hershey’s chocolate is offensive, if not downright inedible. Known in the industry as ‘barnyard’ or ‘cheesy’ chocolate, Hershey’s unique, fermented flavor has never sold in Europe, despite attempts by the company to market it there.” She even quotes a European myth, which has gained a lot of popularity, that Milton Hershey was a cheapskate who developed the product to use up a load of spoiled milk. I’ve never liked Hershey’s milk chocolate, but, then I’ve never liked milk. I left my hotel and sought out a convenience store (surprising hard to find in the downtown area of a large American city — I was in Philadelphia), and proceeded to buy, for comparison purposes, a Hershey Bar, a Toblerone, and several Mars products.

This proves Brenner wrong on one count — “As any candy manufacture can tell you,” she says, “no one ever plans to buy a Snickers or a Clark bar. It just happens.” In fact, reading this book I managed to purchased a package of M&Ms, a Hershey bar, a Mars bar, a Reese’s cup and a Milky Way bar. That’s in addition to the above-mentioned research trip. Some of these products I hadn’t purchased in years, but the quest for knowledge called, and I answered.

There were only two things about the book that bugged me. Brenner is a brilliant reporter, a good story teller and a better writer than me, but her business writing roots are sometimes painfully evident. Sometimes accounting data seems to get in the way of the narrative. I think she also falls flat when she tries a little too hard to be poetic. As when she says about M&M’s:

“What is it about M&Ms? The sugar-coated pellets aglow in the colors of childhood. The edible white Ms that appear magically stamped, centered and perfect. The sumptuous treasure of milk chocolate hidden inside each and every one…”

Makes me want to say “shut up and pass them to me.”

Oh, the other name on M&Ms? R. Bruce Murrie, the son of the president of the Hershey company. The companies were less viciously competitive in those days and, in a clever move by Forrest Mars, Murrie was brought in to the Mars company. Though he was supposed to be second in command, and even got his initial on each M&M, he was really there for the connection to his father. It worked. His presence ensured that Hershey supplied chocolate for M&Ms through World War II rationing. After years of doing nearly no productive work and enduring torrents of abuse from Forrest Mars, Murray finally confronted Mars in 1949. The result was a raging brawl, Mars ordering Murrie out of the M&M plant, and Murrie’s resignation. But his initial is still on the candy.