Hershey vows to 'tighten up' production as an onslaught of Kisses with missing tips spark backlash
- Hershey is investigating and making changes in response to an onslaught of Hershey's Kisses with missing tips.
- The company's operations team is "looking at how to tighten up the variability to deliver a better consumer experience," a representative told Business Insider on Thursday.
- People have been complaining about the Kisses with broken tips on social media in recent days.
Hershey is making changes after an overwhelming number of Hershey's Kisses were discovered to have their tops broken.
The Hershey Company's operations team is investigating what caused the issue, Jeff Beckman, director of corporate communications for Hershey, told Business Insider on Thursday.
"There are a lot variables involved in food production, which creates the variability in how a finished product looks," Beckman said in an email. "They are looking at how to tighten up the variability to deliver a better consumer experience."
Read more: Hershey's Kisses are suffering from widespread broken tips, and people are furious
Beckman said the operations team had not shared what exact variable may have caused the issues with the tips of the Kisses.
On Wednesday, Business Insider reported that people have been taking to social media to complain that they discovered after unwrapping their holiday-themed Hershey's Kisses that the tops of the candies had already been broken off.
When we purchased a bag of holiday Hershey's Kisses at a CVS store in New York City, we similarly discovered that every candy we unwrapped had a broken tip.
The mystery of what exactly would cause such a widespread issue sparked confusion among shoppers, some of whom were infuriated by the misshapen Kisses. One theory circulating on social media was that the Kisses' production quality declined when Hershey moved some manufacturing to Mexico, a transition that began in 2007.
Beckman debunked the theory, saying that the Kisses are made in Hershey, Pennsylvania, at the "state-of-the-art West Hershey plant, which is less than two miles from our corporate headquarters."
Hershey also addressed the issue on Twitter on Wednesday.
"Warm hearts this holiday season and take time to celebrate our differences," the company tweeted alongside a photo of six Hershey's Kisses - two of which had broken tips.
The Kiss catastrophe comes as issues such as high freight costs are slicing into Hershey's profits.
In response to rising costs, Hershey announced in July that it plans to raise prices. In October, executives said the company planned to do so again in 2019.
Contact Business Insider with tips as to what happened to the tips of Hershey's Kisses and other candy-centric concerns at retail@businessinsider.com.
