History of Chocolate USA

This week we are looking at the history of chocolate in the USA.

Around the mid 1660’s chocolate was being imported, it was consumed as a hot, thick drink which was believed to have medicinal properties.

The first true chocolate brands in the United States emerged in the late 1700s and 1800s, as chocolate shifted from a colonial drink to an industrially produced food.

The fist chocolate brand was Baker’s Chocolate founded in 1765 in Massachusetts, Dr. James Baker and chocolatier John Hannon started producing chocolate for drinking, for more than a century, Baker’s dominated the U.S. chocolate market before the rise of Hershey.

In 1852 in San Francisco the company Ghirardelli was founded it brought European chocolate‑making techniques to the American West. It is one of the oldest continuously operating chocolate brands in the USA and it helped establish California as a chocolate‑making hub.

Let’s move forward to 1894 when Milton Hershey pioneered mass production of milk chocolate, making it cheap enough for everyday Americans.

Hershey bars became a national staple and later a WWI and WWII military ration, cementing chocolate as part of American identity. Its bars and Kisses defined U.S. chocolate culture in the 20th century.

Hershey’s chocolate is considered low quantity due to much sugar, cheaper fats and lots of additives.