The battle over chocolate

Author Joel Glenn Brenner is quite a reporter. In The Emperors of Chocolate (338.766 BRE), he reveals the dedication it took on his part to get the scoop on the two US chocolate giants: Hershey and Mars. In the introduction, this reporter said that he never had this much trouble getting information from any company before doing research for this.

Even though Hershey is a publicly traded company, his phone call requests would be blocked. Because Mars is still a privately owned business, he understood their hesitation to answer his questions.

All this secrecy made him more determined to get answers. What he discovered is that the rivalry between these two is actually greater than the one that exists between Coke and Pepsi (competition that has been consistently written about and even promoted in their ads).

I think you'll find their histories quite intriguing. So grab your favorite candy bar - whether it's a Milky Way or Reeses Pieces - and get ready to read about the battle over chocolate.

c Waterloo Public Library 2007