For weeks, Brad Reese, a grandson of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup inventor, has been on a mission to restore the legacy of the candy that bears his family’s name. It started when he bit into a Reese’s Mini Heart: “It was disgusting,” he said in an interview.
Ever since, Mr. Reese has been railing against the Hershey Company, which makes Reese’s products, on LinkedIn and in media appearances. Cheered on by other vocal chocolate fans, he has accused the company of shortchanging customers by quietly replacing the real milk chocolate in some of its candies with a chocolate-flavored substitute.
Hershey’s has maintained that its classic peanut butter cups have always been made with real milk chocolate, and that only certain candies had used the substitute. But now, the company has announced that it will return to using “classic milk and dark chocolate recipes” in all of its products by 2027. The move is a reversal for the company, which, along with other candy brands, has reformulated some products amid rising cocoa prices, swapping expensive cocoa butter with other fats.
The company revealed the changes at an investor meeting it held on Tuesday, a spokeswoman wrote in an email.
Mr. Reese, 70, said he was not satisfied with the announcement, saying the company was not moving quickly enough to change its ingredients. “This is just a P.R. stunt; there’s no victory here,” he said in an interview. “If they were serious, they would do it right away.”
Allison Kleinfelter, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an email that product changes take time. “We are moving with speed, with changes targeted to begin in 2027, covering formulation, packaging, supply lines and ingredient sourcing,” she wrote.
Hershey’s insists that the company started planning for these recipe changes last year and that they were not in response to Mr. Reese’s criticisms. “Consumer preferences for ingredients evolve over time, and we have always responded,” Ms. Kleinfelter wrote.
Most of the brand’s products, including Hershey chocolate bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, are already made with milk or dark chocolate, Ms. Kleinfelter wrote.
Hershey is also “transitioning to colors from natural sources across our sweets portfolio” and adjusting the recipe of KitKat bars “for a creamier taste and texture,” the company said in a statement, adding that it was increasing investment in research and development by 25 percent.
Mr. Reese, a resident of West Palm Beach, Fla., is a grandson of H.B. Reese, a candymaker who invented Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups around 1928, according to a Hershey’s website. Hershey’s bought the H.B. Reese Candy Company in 1963. (Mr. Reese said that while he had never been an employee or representative of the company, he has promoted the Reese’s brand on a voluntary basis for most of his life.)
Mr. Reese’s grievances about the products’ ingredients were widely covered by the news media, including The New York Times. In addition to the heart-shaped candies that set off Mr. Reese’s campaign, the brand’s Peanut Butter Eggs also no longer had milk chocolate listed as an ingredient on their packaging.
In a statement at the time, Hershey’s said it had made recipe adjustments to some Reese’s products to “allow us to make new shapes, sizes, and innovations.”
When Mr. Reese noticed the changes in the candies’ ingredients, it felt like a “betrayal,” he said.
The Hershey’s announcement caught the attention of Calley Means, an adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who posted about it on X on Wednesday. “Thank you President Trump and RFK for inspiring this change,” he wrote. (Mr. Kennedy has criticized food manufacturers for using highly processed ingredients and has urged them to switch to simpler ones.)
“The tidal wave of companies replacing artificial ingredients and getting back to basics is extremely positive,” Mr. Means added in his post.
But Ms. Kleinfelter, the Hershey’s spokeswoman, said the chocolate changes were solely related to consumer preferences.
Alice Callahan is a Times reporter covering nutrition and health. She has a Ph.D. in nutrition from the University of California, Davis.
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