How the Heath Candy Bar Was Made
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The Candy
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The Heath bar is still amazingly simple by the standards of candy bars. A Heath bar has a base layer of English toffee with a thin layer of milk chocolate. Originally, the Heath bar's toffee contained sugar, butter and almonds and was available in 1-ounce bars. Although simple, even by the standards of 1928 when the Heath bar first went into production, it soon became very popular as a candy of choice.
The Business
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The Heath candy bar, named for the Heath brothers in whose confectionary it was made popular, was supposedly bought from a traveling salesman. The Heath Brothers' Confectionery was first established in Robinson, Illinois in 1914. It was originally established by L.S. Heath, a school teacher and was eventually taken over by his two sons, Bayard Heath and Everett Heath. The business was originally a manufacturing facility, candy shop and ice cream parlor all rolled into one.
It was in 1928, however, when the Heath brothers began to produce the Heath candy bar, that business began climbing. Offered on mail order sheets with the milk the company delivered, the Heath bar was also contracted by the U.S. government during World War II to be placed with soldiers' rations. This was mostly due to its superior shelf life. From that point onward, the bar's popularity only grew.
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Today
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Heath bars were still made mostly by hand until 1942, when the process was modernized with machinery. From the 1940s all the way up into the 1980s, the Heath family continued to work in the candy business, branching out to create a variety of Heath products and becoming wildly successful. In 1989, Heath was purchased by a company called Leaf. And in 1996, Hershey Foods Corporation purchased all North American confectionery operations from Leaf. Ever since 1996, Hershey has been producing and selling Heath bars, which are still popular in a variety of forms all over the world.
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