Mars Inc. - The Chocolate Story (Audio)
Ben Gilbert (host), David Rosenthal (host)
In this episode of Acquired, featuring Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, Mars Inc. - The Chocolate Story (Audio) explores mars built global candy empire through scale, secrecy, and strategy The episode traces Mars Inc.’s origins from Frank Mars’s early failures to the breakthrough success of the Milky Way, then shifts to the real architect of modern Mars: his estranged, fiercely ambitious son Forrest Mars Sr.
Mars built global candy empire through scale, secrecy, and strategy
The episode traces Mars Inc.’s origins from Frank Mars’s early failures to the breakthrough success of the Milky Way, then shifts to the real architect of modern Mars: his estranged, fiercely ambitious son Forrest Mars Sr.
It explains how chocolate’s manufacturing complexity, World War-era demand, and distribution/marketing innovations (especially TV) reshaped the American candy industry—and how Mars used scale, efficiency, and brand building to overtake Hershey.
A central arc is Forrest’s “empire-minded” playbook: learning European chocolate-making, building Mars Bar in the UK, entering pet food early, then returning to the US to create M&M’s via a shrewd Hershey partnership and later consolidate control of Mars Inc.
The story culminates in Mars’s long-term advantages (ROTA discipline, decentralized conglomerate strategy, extreme privacy), its pet-care dominance today, and its modern expansion via mega-deals like Wrigley and the proposed Kellanova acquisition.
Key Takeaways
Chocolate is hard—and controlling production becomes a strategic moat.
Chocolate requires complex agricultural sourcing and precise processing (fermentation, roasting, conching, tempering). ...
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Being first to define a region’s “taste” can lock in demand for decades.
Hershey set America’s baseline chocolate taste (including its distinctive sour note), reinforced by WWII rations and nostalgia. ...
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Mars used “scale economies + low prices + ubiquity” to thrive even in downturns.
Mars grew rapidly during the Great Depression by keeping products affordable and leveraging efficient manufacturing. ...
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M&M’s succeeded by reframing the buyer, not just the eater.
Market research found kids loved M&M’s, but parents controlled purchases; the slogan “melts in your mouth, not in your hand” targeted parents’ mess-avoidance anxiety. ...
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ROTA discipline forces reinvestment and operational rigor over headline profit.
Mars emphasized return on total assets (and revalued assets at replacement/market value), pushing fast payback on CapEx and discouraging complacency. ...
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Culture can be engineered into a competitive advantage—sometimes brutally.
Forrest institutionalized open offices, no executive perks, timecards for everyone, high performance-linked pay, and line-stopping authority for quality. ...
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Mars became a pet-care company as much as a candy company—by design, early.
Forrest’s 1930s pet food acquisition (Chappie’s) wasn’t a late diversification hedge; it became a cash engine that funded growth. ...
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Notable Quotes
“I want to conquer the whole goddamn world.”
— Forrest Mars (as quoted in family archives)
“You can hire lawyers… but if you wanna get rich, you gotta know how to make a product.”
— Forrest Mars
“I'm not a candy maker, I'm empire-minded.”
— Forrest Mars
“The milk chocolate that melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”
— M&M’s advertising tagline (discussed by hosts)
“Buy commodities, sell brands… has long been a formula for business success.”
— Warren Buffett (as quoted in episode discussion)
Questions Answered in This Episode
How much of Mars’s long-run edge came from making its own chocolate versus marketing/distribution execution?
The episode traces Mars Inc. ...
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What exactly did Mars’s ROTA discipline change in day-to-day decision-making (CapEx approvals, pricing, advertising budgets) compared with rivals like Hershey?
It explains how chocolate’s manufacturing complexity, World War-era demand, and distribution/marketing innovations (especially TV) reshaped the American candy industry—and how Mars used scale, efficiency, and brand building to overtake Hershey.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Was Forrest’s 80/20 M&M’s deal with the Murries primarily about chocolate supply, military access, or capital—and why did Hershey allow it?
A central arc is Forrest’s “empire-minded” playbook: learning European chocolate-making, building Mars Bar in the UK, entering pet food early, then returning to the US to create M&M’s via a shrewd Hershey partnership and later consolidate control of Mars Inc.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How did Mars’s extreme internal openness (no doors, no offices) coexist with its external secrecy, and what tradeoffs did that create?
The story culminates in Mars’s long-term advantages (ROTA discipline, decentralized conglomerate strategy, extreme privacy), its pet-care dominance today, and its modern expansion via mega-deals like Wrigley and the proposed Kellanova acquisition.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What are the biggest risks to Mars’s core candy business today: health trends (Ozempic), cocoa supply shocks, or retail channel power?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
Okay, David, how many current varieties of M&M's can you name?
Ooh, wow! Okay. Well, plain, peanut, peanut butter.
Uh-huh. Actually, plain is technically now called milk chocolate.
Oh, interesting. There's dark, right?
Yep, which I've got right here. [packaging crinkling]
Uh, they had mint for a while. Did they discontinue mint?
Mint is a holiday-only theme.
Hmm.
So that's a seasonal one.
Oh, [sighs] what else? I mean, at the end of the day, it's kinda only plain and peanut that matter, right?
I think in sales numbers-
Are there pretzel ones?
There are pretzel ones. There are also [packaging crinkling] almond.
Oh, almond. See, I- yeah, I'm allergic to almonds, so I never think about almonds.
There's also some weird ones. Caramel?
Yeah.
I don't want that at all, but they make it. Crunchy Cookie, which replaced Crispy of our youth. Do you remember the blue packaging, Crispy M&M's?
Oh, yeah, I remember the Crispies. Yeah.
And then there's some specialty ones: Dark Chocolate Peanut, which I really want, Fudge Brownie, Campfire S'mores, and Caramel Cold Brew.
Ooh, I don't know about any of these.
And then there's these really wild limited edition ones. In addition to Holiday Mint, Birthday Cake, Chili Nut, and Pumpkin Spice Latte.
[chuckles] Oh, that sounds disgusting.
I know. [laughing]
[laughing]
But yes, I think you are right-
Oh
... the milk chocolate and the peanut are the sales drivers.
Yep.
All right, should we do it?
Let's do it.
Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Hmm. Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down. Say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth?
Welcome to the Fall 2024 season finale of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.
I'm David Rosenthal.
And we are your hosts. Listeners, we were thinking, "What episode would be fun to do before the holidays?" We picked M&M's, thinking, "This will be just some nice, lighthearted fare about the candies and the characters on commercials that remind us all of our childhood." But as we dug into Mars Incorporated, the parent company, we realized that the story is totally thrilling. It's got World War I, World War II, new technologies and inventions, and serious, serious family drama, and their corporate strategy over the years is just as clever as companies like LVMH, Walmart, and Costco. I mean, you don't get to be the second wealthiest family in America without it.
Yeah, [chuckles] seriously. Maybe it's because we just did it, but I feel like there are a lot of echoes of Ikea in this one, too.
Absolutely, and the Mars family is way more quiet and reclusive than the Kamprad family, too.
They're way more quiet and reclusive than anybody.
Yeah. Mars also owns way more than you think. You may know that they own the world's most popular candy, Snickers, in addition to M&M's, or perhaps you know they're in the pet food business. But they also own everything from Ben's Original Rice to now KIND bars, and they have one massive deal in the works that we will talk about later on this episode. David, here's one crazy stat to illustrate their sheer size. Do you know Mars now does more revenue than The Coca-Cola Company?
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