Mars, the discreet family empire of chocolate that invoices some €47,000M

You enter a supermarket. First, you head to the candy aisle. On the shelves, there are bags of M&M's, the mythical chocolate pearls coated in colors; Snickers bars, made with peanuts and caramel; Twix, with crunchy cookies; Mars, fluffier and sweeter, and Maltesers, chocolate-covered balls. Now you turn towards the pet product area. The route continues with Pedigree cans for dogs and Whiskas for cats, bags of Catsan litter, and Royal Canin kibble. And when you're about to pay, next to the checkout, rows of little boxes of Orbit gum still catch your eye.At first glance, it might seem like a random assortment of brands you can find at the supermarket, but they all share the same owner. They are owned by Mars, one of the largest family-owned companies in the world: in 2024, it had a turnover of approximately 47 billion euros, according to its annual sustainability report. The figure coexists with another striking piece of data: Forbes placed the Mars family's fortune at around 117 billion dollars in 2024, just behind the Waltons, the heirs of Walmart, among the richest dynasties in the United States. But who are the Mars family and how did they found this empire?The origin: a Washington kitchen

The story begins in 1911 in a kitchen in Tacoma, Washington state. It was there that young Frank C. Mars began to manufacture and sell wholesale butter cream candies. As a child, his mother had taught him to hand-dip chocolates, and little by little, he had been perfecting the technique. The project, however, didn't last long, as local competition and difficulties in increasing production ended up stifling it.The leap came a few years later. In 1920, Frank C. Mars moved to Minneapolis and launched a new candy business, the Mar-O-Bar Company. There he began experimenting with more resistant chocolate bars and fillings, designed to better withstand transport and reach more customers. The first attempt, the Mar-O-Bar, did not quite work out: it was too delicate a product and did not withstand travel well. However, that failure made him realize that to grow, he didn't need a product that was simply good: it also had to be easy to manufacture, package, and distribute.In 1923 he stumbled upon what he was looking for: the Milky Way. The idea arose after a conversation between Frank and his son Forrest. It occurred to them to convert the taste of a malted milk shake, very popular in the United States at the time, into a chocolate bar that could be eaten with one's hands. The result was an immediate success. That bar not only boosted sales, but also changed the scale of the business. Mars went from being a candy maker with few aspirations to a company capable of hiring salespeople, expanding production, and starting to think about expanding.From Snickers to M&M's

The expansion gained momentum in the late twenties. In 1929, Mars moved to Chicago, a better-connected city with greater logistical capacity, and opened a production plant there. That same year, Forrest E. Mars, Frank's only son, officially joined the family business. Shortly after, in 1930, the company launched Snickers, which would eventually become one of its great global icons. In 1932, Forrest moved to the United Kingdom, from where he boosted the group's international expansion and consolidated the idea that would shape Mars' culture for decades: growing the company by thinking not only about the product but also about the relationship with employees, suppliers, and consumers.The new great leap arrived with M&M’s. In 1940, Forrest E. Mars returned to the United States and founded M&M Limited in New Jersey. A year later, the first M&M’s were produced for the U.S. Army, conceived as a sweet that was easy to transport and more resistant than conventional chocolate. In 1945, after World War II, the brand reached the general public. From then on, Mars was no longer just a bar company: it added new candy brands, entered the pet food business with products like Chappie, Whiskas, or Pedigree, and opened the door to other categories, such as rice. Today, Mars remains in the hands of the founding family.