40 Businesspeople in confectionery

Thomas Adams was a 19th-century American scientist and inventor who is regarded as a founder of the chewing gum industry. His chewing gum company, Adams, became American Chicle Company, and eventually was purchased by Warner-Lambert, Pfizer, and then Cadbury.

George Bassett (1818–1886) was the founder in 1842 of Bassett's, a confectionery firm in Sheffield. The company introduced Liquorice allsorts. He went on to become Mayor of Sheffield (1876). Whilst Mayor, he had US President Ulysses S. Grant as a house guest. He was born in Ashover, Derbyshire, and married as his first wife, Sarah Hodgson, they had six daughters. He married as his second wife, Sarah Ann Hague: they had two sons. He is buried in Sheffield General Cemetery with his second wife, Sarah Ann.

William Emerson Brock III was an American Republican politician who served in both chambers of the United States Congress from 1963 to 1977 and later in the United States Cabinet from 1981 to 1987. He was the grandson of William Emerson Brock Sr., a Democratic U.S. senator who represented Tennessee from 1929 to 1931.

William Emerson Brock was a Democratic United States Senator from Tennessee from 1929 to 1931.

Richard Barrow Cadbury was an English entrepreneur, chocolate-maker and philanthropist. He was the second son of the Quaker John Cadbury, founder of Cadbury's cocoa and chocolate company.

François-Louis Cailler was a Swiss entrepreneur and early chocolatier who founded Cailler, the first modern brand of Swiss chocolate and the oldest still in existence, in 1819.

David Lytle Clark was an Irish entrepreneur who founded the D. L. Clark Company confectioners in 1886 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, now part of Pittsburgh. He was born in County Londonderry, Ireland, the son of Samuel and Jane Clark. He had come to the U.S. with his family from Ireland when he was eight years old, and educated in the public schools. He began making candy in a one-room location in Allegheny City at the age of 19, and later expanded into making gum when learning in 1886 of a new approach using chicle. This he would use bright food coloring and flavor it with extracts of woodland leaves he had chewed as a boy. He is best known for his creation of the D. L. Clark Company, a confectionary, and for creating some of its best known products, including the Clark bar and the Zagnut, as well as for its spinoff, the Clark Chewing Gum Company with its Clark's Teaberry gum.

Sir Thomas Henry Cleeve was a Canadian-born businessman, domiciled in Ireland, who was elected High Sheriff of Limerick City on three occasions.

John Bacon Curtis was an American businessman from Maine. He is credited as the inventor of chewing gum, as well as the first person to commercialize it using natural products and flavorings. He got the idea for making chewing gum after seeing loggers chew spruce resin. He started with a this product and changed it a couple of years later to a flavored paraffin wax gum, which was more successful. He eventually built a factory in Maine that employed some 200 employees and produced several brands of chewing gum. From the profits he made from his business, he expanded into commercial farming and owned over 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) of land. He had become wealthy and by the time he died at the age of 70 in 1897, he was worth $15 million in 2019 dollars.

Michele Ferrero was an Italian billionaire businessman. He owned the chocolate manufacturer Ferrero SpA, Europe's second largest confectionery company, which he developed from the small bakery and café of his father in Alba, Piedmont. His first big success was adding vegetable oil to the traditional gianduja paste to make the popular spread Nutella.

Joseph Storrs Fry (1767–1835) was an English chocolate and confectionery manufacturer and a member of the Fry Family of Bristol, England.

Domenico "Domingo" Ghirardelli was an Italian-born chocolatier who was the founder of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company in San Francisco, California.

Sir James Michael Goldsmith was a French-British financier, tycoon and politician who was a member of the prominent Goldsmith family.

Charles Frederick Gunther was a German-American wealthy confectioner, politician, and collector. He purchased many of the items now owned by the Chicago History Museum. He served two terms as a Chicago alderman from the city's 2nd ward.

Frances Kazuko Hashimoto was a Japanese-American businesswoman and community activist. Hashimoto was a key figure and proponent of Los Angeles' Little Tokyo neighborhood. The head of Mikawaya since 1970, Hashimoto, the inventor of mochi ice cream, also introduced the dessert to American consumers.

Milton Snavely Hershey was an American chocolatier, businessman, and philanthropist.

Walchand Hirachand Doshi, was an Indian industrialist and the founder of the Walchand group. He established India's first modern shipyard, first aircraft factory and first car factory; he also established construction companies, sugarcane plantations, sugar factories, confectioneries, engineering companies and many other businesses.

Coenraad Johannes van Houten was a Dutch chemist and chocolate maker known for the treatment of cocoa mass with alkaline salts to remove the bitter taste and make cocoa solids more water-soluble; the resulting product is still called "Dutch process chocolate". He is also credited with introducing a method for pressing the fat from roasted cocoa beans, though this was in fact his father, Casparus van Houten's invention.

Karl Joseph Wilhelm Juchheim was a German confectioner who first introduced baumkuchen to Japan, a traditional German layered cake. The Juchheim Company, founded by Karl Juchheim and his wife in 1921, continues to sell baumkuchen and other sweets according to Juchheim's original recipe in pastry shops throughout Japan.

Peter Kern was a German-born American businessman and politician active in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known as the founder of the confections company that eventually evolved into Kern's Bakery, a brand still marketed in the Knoxville area. The company's former confectionery and ice cream parlor, now called the Mall Building, still dominates the southwest corner of Market Square. Kern served as Knoxville's mayor from 1890 until 1892.

Daniel Franklin Lafean was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Dylan Lauren is an American businesswoman. She is the daughter of American fashion designer Ralph Lauren, and the owner of New York City's Dylan's Candy Bar, which claims to be the "largest candy store in the world".

George William Loft was an American businessman, politician, real estate developer, and owner/breeder of thoroughbred racehorses.

Forrest Edward Mars Jr. was an American heir. He was the eldest son of Audrey Ruth (Meyer) and Forrest Mars Sr., and the grandson of Frank C. Mars, the founder of Mars, Incorporated, the confectionery company. In March 2015, Forbes estimated his wealth to be $26.8 billion up from US $11 billion in March 2010. In October 2012, the Bloomberg Billionaires List ranked Mars as the 31st richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of 20.1 billion.

Forrest Edward Mars Sr. was an American businessman and the driving force of the Mars candy empire. He is best known for introducing Milky Way (1923) and Mars (1932) chocolate candy bars, and M&M's (1941) chocolate candy, as well as orchestrating the launch of Uncle Ben's Rice. He was the son of candy company Mars, Inc. founder Frank C. Mars and his first wife Ethel G. Mars.

Franklin Clarence Mars, sometimes known as Frank C. Mars, was an American business magnate who founded the food company Mars, Incorporated, which mostly makes chocolate candy. Mars' son Forrest Edward Mars developed M&M's and the Mars bar.

Jacqueline Mars is an American heiress and investor. She is the daughter of Audrey Ruth (Meyer) and Forrest Mars, Sr., and granddaughter of Frank C. Mars, founders of the American candy company Mars, Incorporated. As of April 2021, Mars was ranked by Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the 48th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$43.4 billion.

Carroll Leach Meins was a political figure who served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, and Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston.

Alina Morse is an American entrepreneur, the CEO and founder of Zolli Candy. Her company sells the candy she developed: sugar free lollipops called Zollipops, hard candy called Zolli Drops, and taffy called Zaffi Taffy. The candy is sold online and in about 25,000 stores in the United States and internationally, totaling US$6 million in sales in 2018. She was the youngest person to be on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine, and she was twice invited to the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama. In addition to being the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company, Morse goes to high school and dances competitively.

Henri Nestlé was a German-Swiss confectioner and the founder of Nestlé, the world's largest food and beverage company.

Daniel Peter was a Swiss chocolatier and entrepreneur. A neighbour of Henri Nestlé in Vevey, he was one of the first chocolatiers to make milk chocolate and is credited for inventing it, in 1875 or 1876, by adding powdered milk to the chocolate.

Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko is a Ukrainian businessman and politician who served as President of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019. Poroshenko is currently a people’s deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and leader of the party European Solidarity.

Charles Harry Price II was a prominent American businessman and ambassador of the United States.

Harry Burnett "H. B." Reese was an American inventor and businessman known for creating the No. 1 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.

Johannes Peter "Hans" Riegel, also known as Hans Riegel Jr., was a German entrepreneur who owned and operated the confectioner Haribo since 1946.

William Salice was an Italian businessman. He was employed at Ferrero SpA, where he was credited as the inventor of Kinder Eggs.

Louis Sherry was an American restaurateur, caterer, confectioner and hotelier during the Gilded Age and early 20th century. His name is typically associated with an upscale brand of candy and ice cream, and also the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in New York City.

Taichiro Morinaga (1865–1937) was a Japanese philanthropist and entrepreneur. In 1899, he founded what would become Morinaga & Co, the first modern candy company in Japan, and the first to mass-produce chocolates in the country. Now known for the popular fruit candy Hi-Chew, one of Morinaga & Co's first products was marshmallow.

Philip Knight Wrigley, often called P. K. Wrigley, was an American chewing gum manufacturer and executive in Major League Baseball, inheriting both of those roles as the quiet son of his much more flamboyant father, William Wrigley Jr.

William Mills Wrigley Jr. was an American chewing gum industrialist. He was founder of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company in 1891.