Do Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups taste different today than they did years ago? That’s what the inventor’s grandson believes.
Brad Reese recently accused The Hershey Company of changing the recipe his grandfather, H.B. Reese, created nearly 100 years ago. In a LinkedIn post, Reese penned a letter to Todd Scott, Corporate Brand and Editorial Manager at The Hershey Company.
“My grandfather, H. B. REESE (Who Invented REESE’S), built REESE’S on a simple, enduring architecture: Milk Chocolate + Peanut Butter. Not a flavor idea. Not a marketing construct. A real, tangible product identity that consumers have trusted for a century,” the youngest Reese explained.
Instead, Reese alleges the candy’s “identity is being rewritten, not by storytellers, but by formulation decisions” that have replaced milk chocolate with “compound coatings” and peanut butter “with peanut-butter-style-crèmes.”
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According to The Hershey Company, H.B. Reese, an employee, created the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in his basement in 1928. The Hershey Company would supply him with its chocolate for coating until it purchased the business in 1963.
The Hershey Company has since pushed back on Reese’s allegations.
“Our iconic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are made the same way they always have been; starting with roasting fresh peanuts to make our unique, one-of-a-kind peanut butter that is then combined with milk chocolate,” the company said in a statement.
The Hershey Company lists the current ingredients of Reese’s as milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, skim milk, milk fat, lactose, lecithin, and polyglycerol polyricinoleate, a synthetic additive known as PGPR), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, salt, and tert-butyl hydroquinone (TBHQ) and citric acid for freshness.
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The company did, however, acknowledge that “recipe adjustments” are made to allow for “new shapes, sizes and innovations.” The Hershey Company previously told Nexstar that holiday-specific Reese’s have a different taste, for example.
The ingredients for the Reese’s Eggs are nearly the same as the usual Reese’s cups: peanuts, milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, skim milk, milk fat, lactose, lecithin, and PGPR), sugar, dextrose, whey, salt, and the artificial flavor vanillin.
The Hershey Company has released multiple product line extensions over the years, as well. Today, you can step into a retailer and find a variety of spin-offs of the original Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, such as Reese’s Big Cups, Reese’s Caramel Big Cups, and more.
