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American businessman and inventor

Harry Burnett Reese (May 24, 1879 – May 16, 1956) was an American inventor and businessman known for creating the number one selling candy brand in the United States; Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and founding the H. B. Reese Candy Company. In 2009, he was posthumously inducted into the Candy Hall of Fame.

H. B. Reese was born on May 24, 1879, on the Frosty Hill Farm, an agricultural and dairy farm located near the Muddy Creek Forks Historic District in York County, Pennsylvania.

On August 1, 1900, Reese married Blanche Edna Hyson (1882–1968), the daughter of Mary Elizabeth Markey (1857–1952) and Robert Bortner Hyson (1853–1930). Together they had 16 children, 8 daughters and 8 sons (13 of whom survived to adulthood). Reese's mother Annie Belinda Manifold (1854–1935) and her sisters Elizabeth Turner Manifold (1846–1910) and Mary Collins Manifold (1847–1933) lived with him for the rest of their lives. At least 20 family members were present during a typical Reese family supper and sometimes more than 40.

In 1916, Reese read an ad in the York Daily Record by Milton S. Hershey seeking to hire people to manage and operate his numerous dairy farms that were located in the Hershey, Pennsylvania, area. In 1917, Hershey hired Reese to work as a dairyman at Farm 28 A. In 1918, Hershey asked Reese to manage a dairy farm called the Round Barn. Hershey visited the Round Barn every two weeks because it was an experimental dairy farm that used new milking machines (more efficient than milking cows by hand) as he sought new approaches to animal treatment and milk production. In 1919, Hershey found the Round Barn too expensive to operate and closed it.

Reese incorporated the H. B. Reese Candy Company in 1923. Selling a large assortment of candies on consignment, his employees coated by hand each piece of candy on marble slabs, some coated with milk chocolate and others with dark chocolate that were placed in two pound and five pound boxes that were sold in department store candy displays. To promote sales, Reese set up special coating tables in the front display windows of large, downtown department stores and had his employees coat candies in full view of shoppers passing by while other employees handed out freshly made samples. Below is a brief list of the candy initially manufactured by the H. B. Reese Candy Company. They were made with ingredients such as real cocoa butter, fresh cream, fresh grated coconut and freshly roasted peanuts:

By 1928, H. B. and Blanche had 16 children. That same year, Reese invented Reese's Peanut Butter Cups after one of his customers in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, reported supply problems with another confectioner who made a candy consisting of peanut butter covered with chocolate. Before Reese died in 1956, he began construction of a second plant located at 925 Reese Avenue, Hershey, Pennsylvania. Completed on November 30, 1957, this new modern plant contained 100,000 square feet of state of the art manufacturing technology built at a cost equivalent of $6.9 million at a time when the sales of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were equivalent to $125 million.

After a short illness, H. B. Reese died of a heart attack eight days before his 77th birthday, on May 16, 1956, at the St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he had been vacationing. His residence at the time of his death was located at 630 Linden Road in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

On July 2, 1963 (seven years after the death of H. B. Reese), when the sales of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were equivalent to $243 million, his sons Robert, John, Ed, Ralph, Harry and Charles Richard Reese, merged the H. B. Reese Candy Company with The Hershey Company in a tax free stock for stock merger. In 2024 after 61 years of stock splits, the Reese brothers' original 666,316 shares of Hershey common stock represent 16 million Hershey shares valued at over $4.4 billion that pay annual cash dividends of $87.6 million. At the time of its 1963 merger, the H. B. Reese Candy Company was celebrating its 40th anniversary and had just added 200,000 square feet of new state of the art manufacturing capacity to its 925 Reese Avenue plant in Hershey. In 1969, only six years after the Reese/Hershey merger, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups became the best selling product of The Hershey Company. As of September 20, 2012, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were the No. 1 selling candy brand in the United States with sales of $2.603 billion. Furthermore, back in 1973, the H. B. Reese Candy Company plant added yet another 200,000 square feet of manufacturing space in order to begin production of the Kit Kat for sale in the United States which had 2012 U. S. sales of $948 million, making Kit Kat the No. 4 selling candy brand in the United States.