When people hear the name Hershey’s, they imagine a chocolate bar wrapped in silver foil or a theme park filled with rides and sweet treats. They picture a man who must have grown up privileged. If not with the silver spoon, then surely with a spoon of chocolate. But the real story of Milton Hershey isn’t as sweet as candy. It’s far more challenging, layered, and complicated than ever.
Before he was the “Chocolate King,” Milton Hershey was a three-time loser. He was a man who had failed so often and so badly that his own family began seeing him as a drifter destined never to amount to anything. He didn’t just have bad days at work, he endured years of bankruptcy and debt and the shame of having to come home with nothing but what was on his back.
This is the tale of the countless business graves Milton Hershey dug before he found the soil where he could plant an empire.
Who Was Milton Hershey?
Milton Snavely Hershey came into this world in 1857 on a little farm in Pennsylvania. His childhood was just average. Milton’s dad, Henry Hershey, was constantly on the lookout for the next big thing, a man full of big ideas and big plans, but he rarely got so far as to actually follow his ideas through. Due to his father’s frequent moves and changes in plans, Milton’s early life was very unstable. In the span of only eight years, he went to seven different schools in seven different places and never stayed in one place long enough to put down roots.
His father got him an apprenticeship to a printer when he was just 14 years old. It was a disaster. Milton did not like it one bit, and one day he accidentally dropped his hat into the printing press. He was fired on the spot.
His mother, Fanny, decided that he should learn a real trade and business. So she got him a job with a man named Joseph Roy, who worked in a candy shop in Lancaster, Pa. Milton worked in the heat of the kitchen for four years. He learned to do things like boil sugar, pull taffy and blend flavours. He loved it. By age 18, he felt he was prepared to display his abilities to the world.
The First Failure: The Philadelphia Shop (1876–1882)
Milton saw a very big golden opportunity in the United States. Because a huge festival, the Centennial Exposition, was taking place in Philadelphia then. There was going to be an influx of millions of people to the city, and all of them would be craving snacks.
Therefore, he got some money from his mother’s family, the Snavelys, and started a candy store of his own. He put in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at the store. He would work all day making candy and then walk the streets at night, attempting to sell it. For a time, everything seemed to be well. He even relocated to a larger building.
What went wrong?
Milton had the heart of a candy maker but the mind of a kid who didn’t yet know money. He was too generous toward his clientele. Back then, people didn’t always pay cash; they made promises to pay later. In the meantime, those who sold him sugar and milk wanted their cash now.
He was fighting beyond his abilities, too. He opened up a wholesale business above his retail shop, which meant that he was paying more for workers and delivery than he was making in profits. After six long years of trying, he ran out of health and out of money. He had to shut the doors and chapter. He was 25 and already a loser in the eyes of the business world.
In Search of a Secret: The Discovery in Denver
Milton didn’t retreat to his home and hide after Philadelphia proved unsuccessful. He trailed his father out to Denver, Colorado, looking for silver. They found no silver, but Milton did find something far more precious.
He took a job with another candy maker in Denver. This man taught Milton a secret: Fresh milk will keep caramels soft and longer lasting. Most candy at the time also used paraffin (a type of wax) as a firming agent, and tasted horrible. Fresh milk made the candy rich and creamy. This secret ingredient would eventually change his life, but first, he had some more failing to do.
Mistake No. 2: Burning on the Chicago Letdown
Milton left Denver and moved to Chicago. He believed that a larger city translated to a greater opportunity for success. He opened another candy business.
This time around, it failed more quickly. Chicago was an overcrowded market with too many players. Milton couldn’t afford the larger machines he needed to compete with the other shops. He was still trying to handcraft everything, and it just wasn’t enough sugar to cover the rent. The Chicago business soon fell apart.
Failure Number Three: The New York Disaster (1883–1886)
Milton was stubborn. He settled in New York City, the largest stage in the world. He founded a business he named Hershey’s Fine Candies. He opened a shop on 42nd Street, hoping to apply the fresh-milk caramel recipe he’d learned back in Denver.
For a time, it really worked. People loved the taste. But New York was expensive. The rent was expensive, the sugar prices were increasing, and he was still haunted by debts from his previous failures.
The last straw was when he attempted to grow too quickly. He lacked the cash flow to support his grand ideas. His family in Pennsylvania refused to send him more cash. They said he was squandering his life. His New York operation was raided in 1886, and he left the city.
He went back to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with nothing. When he walked along the street, his cousins literally turned their backs to him. They called him a drifter.
The Battle of the Copper Kettle
When Milton came back to Lancaster after his New York shop shut down, he had nothing waiting for him. No factory. Not even a proper storefront. All he had was his ambition, determination, and a small warehouse that he persuaded his mother and Aunt Mattie to let him use for his work. Every morning, well before the sun came up, Milton was already awake. And after waking up daily, he lightened the fire beneath his worn copper kettle.
He handled everything on his own, making candy, cleaning up the mess, and delivering all the orders himself. At this point, he was no less than one man’s army.
While relatives whispered that he was a drifter destined to fail again, Milton buried himself in the science of sugar. For months, he experimented with the exact amount of milk needed to keep his caramel soft in winter yet firm in summer. Texture became his obsession.
He was convinced that if even one person could taste his caramel and understood that it was very different, the weight of his three past failures would finally lift from his shoulders. With only a wooden spoon in his hand and stretchable belief in himself, he kept pushing forward, determined to impact his name.
The Risk That Saved the Dream
By 1887, Milton was making remarkable candy, yet he was still just getting by. He didn’t even have enough money for buying a horse and a wagon to carry boxes of “crystal A” caramels to the train station to get them delivered on time. Instead, he rented a pushcart and walked through the roads carrying loads himself.
The breakthrough came when an English candy buyer tasted his milk-based caramels and was impressed enough to place a large order with him. The opportunity was thrilling, and terrifying. To fulfil the order, Milton needed a large supply of sugar and milk, but no one wanted to lend money to someone labelled a three-time failure.
Determined, he walked into the Lancaster County National Bank. The manager, Mr Breneman, studied Milton’s worn hands and sincere expression and chose to take a chance that others wouldn’t. He granted Milton a personal loan of $700. With it, Milton purchased his first bulk shipments of ingredients. He worked nearly twenty hours a day to meet the deadline. In that intense stretch of effort, Milton realised something powerful: his past failures hadn’t destroyed him, they had strengthened him
The Ghost of Candy Past Turns Into the Chocolate King
But Milton still wasn’t happy even now that he was finally well-off, courtesy of caramels. In 1893, he attended a world fair in Chicago, where he saw German machinery that could produce chocolate. Then, chocolate was a rich person’s luxury. It was dark, bitter and pretty costly.
So Milton thought, if he could use his veg-nalk secret for fresh milk from his caramel days to make milk chocolate, he could give it to everybody. In 1900, a shocking move shocked the business world: he sold his profitable caramel company for $1 million (more than $30 million today).
He left with all that coin and went back to the cornfields where he rose. Some people thought he was crazy for wanting to build a giant factory in the middle of nowhere. But he also knew the cornfields were surrounded by dairy farms. He had more than enough fresh milk.
He failed for years at the recipe once more, trying to get the milk and chocolate to blend just so without making it spoil. There he finally solved the puzzle, and in 1905 the Hershey factory was born. He didn’t merely construct a factory; he constructed a city, with homes and schools and parks for his workers. He made his record of failure a legacy that would endure for more than 100 years.
Milton Hershey’s story shows us that you are not the sum of your past business graves. Every failure helped him assemble the ultimate puzzle, a recipe in Denver, a credit lesson in Philadelphia, and a scale story in New York. Absent those failures, there would never have been a Hershey bar.
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To know how Milton went from 3 failures to being the king of chocolate with Hershey’s read here.
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