Here's an inside look at how M&M's are made
The smell of sweet chocolate hit us as we approached the factory, which is a few hundred yards from the Mars Chocolate office in Hackettstown, New Jersey.
Upon entering the factory, we were asked to remove all jewelry. Next, Eide examined our fingernails to see if we were wearing nail polish. (They don't want chipped nail polish getting mixed in with the product.) Mine were polished, so I was asked to wear gloves. We were also required to wear a Mars-branded lab coat, like all factory associates.
Next we were given hard hats, safety glasses, ear plugs, and hair nets.
Everyone who enters the factory is required to wear this gear.
Before heading in, we were asked to wash our hands (even if we were wearing gloves for the tour).
The tour finally begins! We start by walking down this colorful hallway lined with lively paintings of M&M's characters.
The Hackettstown plant creates M&M's Milk Chocolate, M&M’s Minis, and Peanut M&M’s, as well as 21 different colors and custom print products.
"Mixing and tempering the chocolate are key," Eide explains. "Conching" is the first part of the process, when all of the raw material for chocolate is mixed together.
The chocolate is then sent to standardizing. where it is tempered to the correct temperature needed to create the desired shape of M&M's.
Next, the chocolates are sent through the cooling tunnels to ensure they are cooled and ready for the coloring process.
Eide let us try the M&M's chocolates at every stage in the process. "Fresh" and "sweet" don't even begin to describe how they tasted.
Once the chocolates are cooled, they are given their signature colors — a process that can't be rushed.
The coloring drips slowly until the pieces are vibrant.
The signature colors are yellow, red, green, brown, orange, and blue, the newest color. Blue was introduced in 1995 after consumers voted on a color to replace the tan M&M's, which had been around since the late 1940s.
For Peanut M&M's, the nuts — which are mainly supplied to Hackettstown from the Southeast region of the US — go through a roasting process. Then they are sprayed with chocolate three times to get the right chocolate-to-nut ratio.
"Millions of M&M's are made here each day," Eide says. The factory, which is approximately 460,000 square feet, is very loud and sweet-smelling. "The odor gets into your clothes, and it might be pleasant now, but once you get home it smells more like spoiled milk," one associate explains.
A lot of the process is proprietary and we were not allowed to see — or photograph — certain areas of the factory. "Everyone always wants to know how we place the 'M' on each M&M, but that's still top secret," Eide explains. "For such a small piece of chocolate, M&M's are surprisingly sophisticated. We can’t share all of the details behind the production process because we want to keep the magic and mystery behind the 'M' alive."
But once that step is done, the pieces are packaged and sent across the country.
"M&M's today taste the same as they did when the first M&M's were produced in 1941 and that’s a direct result of our extreme focus on delivering consistent, outstanding quality," Eide says.
From start to finish, she says, it takes anywhere from 10 to 12 hours to create a bag of M&M's.
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