Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
 
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| Product type | Confectionery |
|---|---|
| Owner |
The Hershey Company (H.B. Reese Candy Company) |
| Country | United States |
| Introduced | 1928 |
| Markets | Worldwide |
| Tagline | Reese's ...perfect |
| Website | www.reeses.com |
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are a popular American candy consisting of a milk, white, or dark chocolate cup filled with peanut butter, marketed by The Hershey Company. They were created in 1928 by H. B. Reese, a former dairy farmer and shipping foreman for Milton S. Hershey. Reese was inspired by Hershey and left dairy farming to start his own candy business.
The Harry Burnett Reese Candy Co. was established in the basement of Reese's house in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Reese had originally worked at a Hershey dairy farm, and from the start he used Hershey Chocolate in his confections. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were his most popular candy, and Reese eventually discontinued his other lines.
Reese died on May 16, 1956, passing the company to his six sons, Robert, John, Ed, Ralph, Harry, and Charles Richard Reese. On July 2, 1963, the Reese brothers merged the H.B. Reese Candy Company with the Hershey Chocolate Corporation in a tax-free stock-for-stock merger with the six Reese brothers receiving 666,316 Hershey common shares, valued in 1963 at $23.5 million. In 2017, after 54 years of stock splits, those original shares now represent sixteen million Hershey common shares valued in excess of $1.7 billion, paying $39.5 million in annual cash dividends. The H.B. Reese Candy Company is maintained as a subsidiary of Hershey because the Reese plant workforce is not unionized, unlike the main Hershey plant. As of September 20, 2012, Reese's is the best-selling candy brand in the United States with sales of $2.603 billion, and is the fourth-best-selling candy brand globally with sales of $2.679 billion—only $76 million (2.8%) of its sales are from outside the United States market. Additionally, the H.B. Reese Candy Company manufactures the Kit Kat in the United States, which had 2012 U.S. sales of $948 million.
Hershey's produces "limited editions" of the candy that have included:
Other candy products of the Reese's division of Hershey include:
In September 2007, Hershey's began producing a new Reese's bar called Reese's Whipps. Featuring peanut butter-flavored nougat with a chocolate coating, it has been likened to a peanut butter-flavored 3 Musketeers candy bar owned by Mars, Incorporated.
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