Reese’s heir vs. chocolate skimpflation
Planet Money
NPR
4.6 • 30.5K Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When ingredient costs skyrocket, companies have three basic options: They can raise their prices (a sort of product-specific inflation), shrink the size of the products (often called “shrinkflation”), or, sometimes, find more creative ways to reduce costs by degrading the quality of their products - which our very own Greg Rosalsky has dubbed as “skimpflation.” The latest alleged culprit? Hershey’s.
The Hershey Company is using ingredients in some of their Reese’s candies that — legally — they cannot call milk chocolate or peanut butter. This has infuriated Brad Reese, a grandson of H.B. Reese, the inventor of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
On today’s show, why chocolate makers might be skimping on chocolate and peanut butter, what else might explain these ingredients, and how Brad Reese has launched a skimp-shaming campaign to get Hershey’s to go back to using classic Reese’s ingredients.
And – EXCLUSIVE – you’ll hear Planet Money break some big news to third-generation peanut butter cup scion Brad Reese.
Pre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift. / Subscribe to Planet Money+
Listen free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.
Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.
This episode was hosted by Greg Rosalsky and Sarah Gonzalez. It was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Kenny Malone, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is Planet Money from NPR. |
| 0:06.0 | Brad would rather be spending his time singing karaoke right now. |
| 0:11.0 | I do rolling stones. I do Depeche mode. I just have fun. |
| 0:19.8 | Brad is 70, retired in West Palm Beach, Florida. |
| 0:24.0 | And when we first talked to him, he showed up wearing a bright orange, I guess, Hawaiian |
| 0:28.1 | shirt, but with a bunch of Reese's peanut butter cups all over it. |
| 0:32.9 | Honestly, pretty snazzy. |
| 0:34.6 | I mean, I guess you could call me a big Reese's fan. |
| 0:37.9 | And it's his love of Reese's that is keeping him from his beloved karaoke right now. |
| 0:43.0 | Yeah, because a little while ago, he heard that the Hershey Company had released a new |
| 0:49.2 | Reese's chocolate. |
| 0:50.8 | It was Reese's peanut butter, many hearts unwrapped. Okay. And of course, then I went out and |
| 0:57.5 | bought one, bought a pouch. Brad opens the bag and pops some mini hearts in his mouth. And I took |
| 1:03.4 | two bites and it was not recognizable. It was just nasty. It was, it was, it was not edible. Brad spits out the mini hearts and then he |
| 1:14.9 | dumps him in the trash. But then he's like, wait, what was so off about those chocolate hearts? |
| 1:20.6 | I retrieved the pouch, the wrapper, and looked carefully at the front and the back, and there |
| 1:26.9 | was no milk chocolate and there was no milk chocolate, |
| 1:28.5 | and there was no real peanut butter. |
| 1:30.6 | So it wasn't even... |
| 1:32.1 | I don't know what I... |
| 1:33.1 | Greg, I have no idea what I was eating or what I was tasting. |
| 1:36.4 | Brad is like, what is even in here? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.