Reese’s heir vs. chocolate skimpflation

Live event info and tickets here. 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 . /

You can listen to Reese’s heir vs. chocolate skimpflation online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Reese’s heir vs. chocolate skimpflation is an episode from Planet Money by NPR.

This episode is 33:42 long.

This episode was published on Apr 4, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Planet Money when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.