The theme of our road trip is "Americana" and Hershey, Pennsylvania seems a good place to start. Hershey is also the story of American innovation and good 'ole persistence: Milton Hershey started two failed businesses before generating his (still secret) formula for milk chocolate (not even the employees in Hershey Chocolate World know the percentage of cacao in the Hershey milk chocolate bar). He was also one of the first social entrepreneurs, developing one of the first company towns in Pennsylvania, in the heart of cow country (Tyler and I still have the jingle: "It's the milk chocolate" in our head, sung by singing cows). Milton Hershey was actually a case study in my "Innovation" class in business school, and innovation can be seen throughout the company (my personal favorite was the invention of Reece's pieces during WWII; sugar was rationed, so Hershey's head of dairy (Mr. Reece) thought of using peanuts in the mix.
Highlight of our Hershey trip was the chocolate tasting, where we sampled five pieces of chocolate to taste "earthy", "nutty", and "caramel" tones. We even left with a diploma for a "Masters Degree in Chocolate Tasting" (no joke).
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