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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Savor production of Ihearted You know.

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Speaker 2: I'm Anny Reece and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we

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Speaker 2: have a short episode for you about various drama that's

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Speaker 2: been going on in the corporate candy world.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it is fun and exciting for us, not

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Speaker 1: for perhaps the entities involved.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because reading about large heists and chocolate family contention

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Speaker 2: is great when you're not involved.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and we are not involved.

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Speaker 2: No, no sponsors, nope, ye, nope. And even though your

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Speaker 2: last name is Reese, you are not that we have

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Speaker 2: been able to prove as of yet, no connected to

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Speaker 2: the Reese's family. But yeah, So if y'all haven't heard

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Speaker 2: dang but Hershey has been going through it, we somehow

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Speaker 2: have never done an episode on that company in general,

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Speaker 2: so you cannot go see that. But we are going

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Speaker 2: to be talking about kit Kats and Reese's brands, so

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Speaker 2: you can see our episodes on those from February of

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Speaker 2: twenty nineteen and October of twenty twenty, respectively. We've also

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Speaker 2: done a whole episode on food crime that was a

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Speaker 2: great one, yes, and one about pershudo fraud specifically, and

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Speaker 2: that was also very intense.

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Speaker 1: It really was.

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Speaker 2: Oh I love it. Yes, yes, But so both of

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Speaker 2: these are like news items that are being updated. So

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Speaker 2: we've got this coming to you from the afternoon of Tuesday,

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Speaker 2: April twenty first of twenty twenty six.

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Speaker 1: Yess could change. Oh yeah, I yeah, I'll talk about it.

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Speaker 1: But I was making sure right before we started that

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Speaker 1: things had not changed drastically.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: We put together this outline.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I realized that I hadn't checked and it

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Speaker 2: was slightly panicked, said Annie, Annie, have you checked.

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Speaker 1: What's happening with the Kitkats? I did check, but yes,

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Speaker 1: let us talk about what's happening with the kit.

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Speaker 2: With the Kitkats.

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Speaker 1: Yes, so recently, listeners, you may have seen a KitKat

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Speaker 1: truck surrounded by a cavalcade of black SUVs for security,

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Speaker 1: and we are going to break down why that is.

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Speaker 1: On March twenty sixth, twenty twenty six, four hundred and

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Speaker 1: thirteen seven hundred and ninety three units are around twelve

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Speaker 1: tons of the newly introduced F one Kitcat candies shaped

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Speaker 1: like race cars. We're stolen along with the truck carrying

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Speaker 1: them while in transit from a factory in Italy to Poland.

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Speaker 1: The truck was intercepted en route by folks masquerading as

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Speaker 1: law enforcement. The driver was removed and restrained, and the

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Speaker 1: people impersonating law enforcement drove off with the truck. No

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Speaker 1: one was injured, and as of recording I checked today,

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Speaker 1: the truck nor the merchandise has been located neither.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So yes, twelve tons of F one race car

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Speaker 2: shaped Kitcat bars.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And that's important because the shipment was not

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Speaker 1: publicly disclosed, and because the popularity of Formula one has

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Speaker 1: really exploded across Europe in a lot of places, really,

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Speaker 1: but Europe, especially those investigating, think that this was a

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Speaker 1: heist hatched with knowledge of when the company would be moving.

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Speaker 2: These insider knowledge. Oh my goodness.

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Speaker 1: Yep. KitKat became the official candy bar of F one

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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, so this was more than a

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Speaker 1: little embarrassing for them. They were being shipped to align

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Speaker 1: with a certain race.

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Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, oh man, what a bummer.

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Speaker 1: What a bummer? What a bummer? And also I'm sure

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Speaker 1: for them a bummer. This has produced a lot of

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Speaker 1: excellent memes, but they've tried to roll with the punches

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Speaker 1: and have released some public statements that I think are

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Speaker 1: pretty funny. Yes, so from Nesley quote, We've always encouraged

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Speaker 1: people to have a break with KitKat, but it seems

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Speaker 1: thieves have taken the message too literally and made a

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Speaker 1: break with more than twelve tons of our chocolate. Whilst

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Speaker 1: we appreciate the criminal's exceptional taste, the factor may that

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Speaker 1: cargo theft is an escalating issue for businesses of all sizes,

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Speaker 1: with more sophisticated schemes being deployed on a regular basis.

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Speaker 1: We have chosen to go public with our own experience

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Speaker 1: in the hope that it raises awareness of an increasingly

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Speaker 1: common criminal trend. The company also warned about the possibility

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Speaker 1: of these kit cats showing up on the black market,

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Speaker 1: and reiterated that they could be traced if a law

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Speaker 1: enforcement found them in the package.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because they're stamped with you know, like a little

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Speaker 2: serial number of like what batch they are, right, Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: So they launched an online tool called the Stolen KitKat Tracker,

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Speaker 1: asking people to help them locate the missing candy. So

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Speaker 1: if you found one, you scanned the little cereal.

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Speaker 2: Bar, Yeah, if you have in fact purchased I don't

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Speaker 2: know whether they were ever for sale in the US anyway,

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Speaker 2: or but I also don't know where you're listening from.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, if you have purchased or received an F

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Speaker 2: one shaped KitKat, yes, you can go to the Stolen

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Speaker 2: Kitcat tracker and check.

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Speaker 1: You could be a hero. Yes, So from time quote,

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Speaker 1: a customer can go to the web page and then

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Speaker 1: type in the eight digit batch number on the back

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Speaker 1: of their candy bar. When the customer hits enter, the

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Speaker 1: website will say whether the Kitcat is one of the

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Speaker 1: four hundred and thirteen seven hundred and ninety three candy

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Speaker 1: bars that were stolen. This is this is a real heist.

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Speaker 1: I'm serious business, y'all.

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Speaker 2: I recently started watching the TV show Leverage for the

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Speaker 2: first time, and I feel like this this is a

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Speaker 2: plot line made for me in this moment. Anyway. Also,

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Speaker 2: in the aftermath of all of this, KitKat stepped up

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Speaker 2: security for some of their other large shipments, and yes,

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Speaker 2: in Canada, this means that security escorts in the form

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Speaker 2: of black suv envoys accompanied Easter candy from Kitcat to stores.

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Speaker 2: It's a little bit silly marketing push a little bit serious.

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Speaker 1: Uh.

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Speaker 2: The vehicles had little KitKat flags atop their windows like

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Speaker 2: a presidential motorcade. From a press release from the company,

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Speaker 2: we are not sorry for slowing down traffic. We are

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Speaker 2: actually unapologetic for getting you a kit cat delivered safely

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Speaker 2: to a store near you.

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Speaker 1: Wow, it was a very striking photo.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's really funny.

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Speaker 1: It's beautiful. Yes, you know, so questions Yourmaine, why why

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Speaker 1: the theft is because of the popularity of Formula one

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Speaker 1: and the perceived scarcity of products like this in general.

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Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of our when we did

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Speaker 1: pop born buckets and we were talking about Disney popcorn bucket. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but it is interesting to me that, at least from

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Speaker 1: my brief Google search before this, no one's even turned.

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Speaker 2: In a single one.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, a lot of the memes were like,

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Speaker 1: what are you gonna do with twelve tons of kids?

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Speaker 1: What is this? What?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Is it just chaos? Is it like when the

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Speaker 1: Joker gets a million dollars and just burns it? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Right? I mean are you diving through it like Scrooge

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Speaker 2: McDuck I or is it for resale value? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't know either. But as you mentioned this,

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Speaker 1: this did happen before Easter, which is one of the

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Speaker 1: biggest candy days of the year. And yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: somewhat of a marketing plot. It was the cavalcade of

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Speaker 1: like security trucks, but they were also yeah, they were

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Speaker 1: playing into this whole idea kit cats are precious cargo

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Speaker 1: and we're taking this seriously. Yeah. Yeah, and it was

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Speaker 1: very memified. So if you would like to look up

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Speaker 1: the memes, they are there for you.

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Speaker 2: Oh, certainly, okay, And our next half of this corporate

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Speaker 2: candy drama episode has to do with Reese's. But before

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Speaker 2: we get into that, we're going to get into a

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Speaker 2: quick break for a word from our sponsors.

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Speaker 1: And we're back. Thank you, sponsors, Yes, thank you. Okay.

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Speaker 2: So the Riese's thing. If you haven't heard about this one,

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Speaker 2: and Annie certainly has because of her last name, people

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Speaker 2: do text her about this whenever something about the brand occurs.

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Speaker 2: On Valentine's Day of this year, a grandson of the

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Speaker 2: guy who created Reese's peanut buttercups posted this open letter

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Speaker 2: online to Hershey about how their Reese's products suck now

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Speaker 2: because they're using these cheap, inferior ingredients. Stepping back just

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Speaker 2: a little bit briefly. Again, you can see a whole

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Speaker 2: episode about this, but Reese's entire like chocolate and peanut

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Speaker 2: butter shtick was invented in nineteen twenty eight by one

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Speaker 2: Harry Burnett or HB. Reese, who got his starting candy

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Speaker 2: working for Hershey, but had his own company at the

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Speaker 2: time of the invention. After his death in the fifties,

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Speaker 2: his kids wound up selling Reese's brand to Hershey in

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Speaker 2: the sixties. At the time of his grandfather's death, Brad

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Speaker 2: Reese was just a baby, but he grew up with

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Speaker 2: his family's sale of the brand very much discussed amongst

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Speaker 2: themselves and in the news. You know, he was living

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Speaker 2: in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The whole thing very much made an impact,

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Speaker 2: and after a number of other business ventures over the

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Speaker 2: course of his lifetime, over the past several years, he's

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Speaker 2: really taken it upon himself to be like an unofficial

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Speaker 2: brand ambassador for Reese's.

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Speaker 1: Like he's just like out there.

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Speaker 2: Wearing Reese's merch and whenever anyone talks to him about it,

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Speaker 2: he like gets selfies with them and tells them facts

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Speaker 2: about the company's history, and like talks up different products

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Speaker 2: and to be clear, he has never worked for her.

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Speaker 2: She this is entirely hobby status, like he's just out

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Speaker 2: there doing this. But so, leading up to Valentine's Day,

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Speaker 2: Brad apparently picked up a bag of one of Reese's

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Speaker 2: seasonal products. These these little heart shaped peanut butterfilled chocolates

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Speaker 2: that are individually wrapped, you know, like bite sized little things. Sure,

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Speaker 2: and Brad found them inedible. He threw them out and

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Speaker 2: proceeded to write this like four hundred words SmackDown on LinkedIn,

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Speaker 2: addressed directly to one of Hershey's brand manager. Uh yeah, dude, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I know, right, like tagging him and her. She threw

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Speaker 2: out the text love it, love it, and Okay. So

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Speaker 2: if you look at the label of the product in

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Speaker 2: question and compare it to that of standard Reese's peanut

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Speaker 2: butter cups, you start to see Brad's problem. The standard

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Speaker 2: cups are labeled with the words milk, chocolate, and peanut butter.

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Speaker 2: The Hearts package, on the other hand, specifies that it's

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Speaker 2: chocolate candy filled with peanut butter cream, which are both

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Speaker 2: shined up industry ways of saying that you have not

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Speaker 2: included enough chocolate or peanut butter to just call it

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Speaker 2: those things, and Brad Brad was mad, unhappy. Here's a

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Speaker 2: quote from the piece. My grandfather H. B. Reese, who

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Speaker 2: had invented Reese's, built Reese's on a simple, enduring architecture

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Speaker 2: milk chocolate plus peanut butter, not a flavor idea, not

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Speaker 2: a marketing construct, a real tangible product identity the consumers

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Speaker 2: have trusted for a century. But today Reese's identity is

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Speaker 2: being rewritten, not by storytellers, but by formulation decisions that

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Speaker 2: replace milk chocolate with compound coatings and peanut butter with

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Speaker 2: peanut butter style creams across multiple Reese's products. He goes

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Speaker 2: on to call the issue a brand governance question and

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Speaker 2: imply that like the Reese's brand's good name is being

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Speaker 2: diluted by this candy malfeasance.

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Speaker 1: Wow, did not hold back, No, no, sir, And okay,

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Speaker 1: I will say that that we witness this kind of

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Speaker 1: product move.

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Speaker 2: I'm not necessarily going to say dilution, but maybe that's

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Speaker 2: what I mean. We witness this all the time, especially

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Speaker 2: with these mega manufacturers, because you know, like as economic pressures,

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Speaker 2: including investor pressures, squeeze a company, you know, you start

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Speaker 2: to look for ways to gain your profits, and there's

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Speaker 2: all kinds of things. You can look at efficiency, energy, packaging, transport,

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Speaker 2: marketing and advertising, and of course the product itself. So

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Speaker 2: when you look at that, okay, what can you do?

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Speaker 2: You can raise the price to consumers, which generally isn't popular.

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Speaker 2: You can keep the same price per package and lessen

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Speaker 2: the amount of product that's actually in it, also not popular,

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Speaker 2: but a little bit more under the radar. The example

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Speaker 2: that always pops into my mind is when Hogandaws retooled

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Speaker 2: their pint packaging to appear to be the same size

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Speaker 2: but to contain only seven eighths of a pint of product.

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Speaker 2: Still mad about it, to be honest. Or you can

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Speaker 2: switch to using cheaper ingredients. And that third one right

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Speaker 2: there is what Brad Reese is accusing the company of

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Speaker 2: Hershey's statement on the whole thing is that like, look,

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Speaker 2: the actual Reese's peanut buttercups are still made the same

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Speaker 2: high quality way they always have been, and that they

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Speaker 2: do play with the formula in developing other treats in

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Speaker 2: order to do whatever they're trying to do with the

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Speaker 2: texture and the format and everything that is their official statement,

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Speaker 2: but you know, like we can sit here and go like, well,

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Speaker 2: all right, like is the result good or is it

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Speaker 2: kind of crap? And furthermore, can we believe them when

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Speaker 2: they imply that they're not doing this as a cost

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Speaker 2: cutting measure but as something for funzies? Yeah, hard to say,

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Speaker 2: hard to say, but okay. Since all of this went

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Speaker 2: down on Valentine's Day. A month and a half later,

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Speaker 2: at Hershey's March thirty first Investor Day event, the company

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Speaker 2: did address this to their investors, like kind of obliquely,

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Speaker 2: they said that over the next year, into twenty twenty seven,

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Speaker 2: they're going to be working on quote ensuring that all

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Speaker 2: Hershey's and Reesi's offerings are consistent with their brand's classic

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Speaker 2: milk and dark chocolate recipes. What this actually means is

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Speaker 2: being interpreted in various ways in the press.

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Speaker 1: The press is really run with this story.

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Speaker 2: I have to Oh, they have they are eating it up,

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Speaker 2: no pun intended. Oh my goodness. The whole thing has

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Speaker 2: also apparently caused some contention within the Reese family, which

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Speaker 2: has some like one hundred and eighty living members today.

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Speaker 2: It was a lot arch family and yeah, there are

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Speaker 2: family members on both sides of the divide.

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Speaker 1: What yeah, oh wow, Oh.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I I tend to shy away

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Speaker 2: from a lot of the like especially seasonal chocolatey type treats,

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Speaker 2: because yeah, I'm kind of like, oh, that's not quite chocolate. Like,

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Speaker 2: I don't know, I do like really dark chocolates most

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Speaker 2: of the time, or like a high quality milk chocolate.

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Speaker 2: So this kind of thing, I don't know, it's not

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Speaker 2: what I would go support to you. Yeah, yeah, I'm like,

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Speaker 2: oh yeah, I clocked that a while ago.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Valentine's Day chocolate is kind of not really that good.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but but yeah, yeah. I guess we'll have

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Speaker 2: to wait for any more developing information about whether they

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Speaker 2: actually do start reformatting or or retro formatting some of

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Speaker 2: their recipes In the meanwhile, though, shout out to Greg Roselski,

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Speaker 2: writing for NPR's Planet Money, who who called brad Reese

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Speaker 2: uh scion of the chocolate comma peanut butter dynasty. Wow, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: it's really the cut. He didn't write chocolate comma peanut

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Speaker 2: butter like literally like there's a there's just the punctuation

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Speaker 2: mark in there, but earnestly it is the comma that

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Speaker 2: sets me off. I mean, scion of the Chocolate Peanut

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Speaker 2: Butter Dynasty is already a really powerful statement. But yes,

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Speaker 2: for some reason, the ap style comma just gets me.

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Speaker 1: It's a dramatic comma. It's it makes you take pause. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I appreciate the power of the words you're reading. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I will be really interested to see where Brad Reese

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Speaker 1: land in the future. Is he going to become like

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Speaker 1: the anti Reese?

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Speaker 2: Like maybe we don't know?

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Speaker 1: Fascinating stuff. What a dust up?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? And how that? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: I hope, I hope that we will have updates for

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Speaker 2: you at some point. You know, some of some of

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Speaker 2: these heists, you know, they never get solved, or if

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Speaker 2: they do, it's like years down the line.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, listeners, if you find one of those kit cats,

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Speaker 1: you know what to do. I'm so yeah, I want

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Speaker 1: to know what happened to them. I'm just curious what

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Speaker 1: happened to them. Yeah, but yes, we will as these

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Speaker 1: stories unfold. I'm sure we will.

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Speaker 2: Have updates, absolutely, But that I believe is what we

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Speaker 2: have to say about both of them for now.

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Speaker 1: Yes, we would love to hear from you listeners, though,

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Speaker 1: if you have any thoughts, any opinions about Reese's and

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Speaker 1: their varying qualities of candy types. Yeah, please let us know.

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Speaker 1: You can email us at Hello at savorpod dot com.

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Speaker 2: We're also on social media. You can find us on

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Speaker 2: Instagram and blue Sky at savor pod and we do

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Speaker 2: hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, you can visit the

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Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

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Speaker 2: favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan

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Speaker 2: Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and

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Speaker 2: we hope that lots more good things are coming your

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Speaker 2: way