Asher’s Chocolates is in its fourth generation of family leadership, and has been in business since the 1890s.

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With more than 120 years behind it, Souderton, Pa.-based Asher’s Chocolates has quite a history in the candy industry. The company has innovated with the times, expanded its manufacturing fac­ilities to encompass hundreds of thousands of square feet and still uses many of the same recipes it popularized in the 1890s. In its fourth generation of ownership, the company – which was based in Philadelphia for most of its history before moving recently to Souder­ton, is show­ing no sign of slowing down.

Today, consumers are choosing supermarkets and big-box stores to buy their candy instead of individual counters, and are gravitating towards healthier options like antioxidant-high dark chocolate and Asher’s sugar-free line of candy. The company continues to evolve with customers’ demands, but maintains the identity that made it famous. In a recent interview with U.S. Business Review, co-owner Jeff Asher discussed how the industry is changing.

U.S. Business Review: How has the company changed since its inception?
Jeff Asher: We started out manufacturing candy for our own candy stores exclusively, then over the years, we got away from that entirely. We went from factory outlets into wholesale. That was the biggest change in how the company operated, but really in so many ways it stayed the same. We are using many of the same recipes my great-grandfather used when he started the company. It is still entirely family-owned and operated.

Things have changed in some ways in how our candy is produced. Processes have changed to some degree but really recipes have not.

One thing that has changed recently is the move away from bulk chocolates. We built our manufacturing for those, and in the last decade or so, the push has been to package them individually.

There used to be candy stores in every mall, and every department store had a candy department, where you could go and buy a couple of buttercreams. Now you see candy on the shelves. People still want chocolate, but a lot of the time it’s prepackaged. That’s been the big­gest shift.

USBR: How does that affect your manufacturing operations?
JA: It certainly presents issues because quite frankly, a lot more is involved in packing chocolates individually. It re­quires a lot more labor than just packing six pounds of chocolate into one box. It definitely drives up the cost – the packaging of the candy. It adds, I’d say, a good 10 percent to the final cost.

USBR: How are customers’ demands changing?
JA: Dark chocolate has become a lot more popular. For the first time in our his­tory, we sold as much dark chocolate as we did milk last year; that’s a trend we’ve been seeing.

We’re also seeing a resurgence of our sugar-free line. That had peaked at the height of the low-carb craze and then it fell off a bit, but unfortunately the number of diabetics is increasing and we have seen a resurgence in the sugar-free area as a result. I think we make an excellent sugar-free chocolate.

USBR: How else are you adapting to the changing market?
JA: The key is to go where people are shopping these days – not necessarily candy stores as much as big-box stores and in the Costcos of the world. The trick is to get yourself where people are actually shop­ping.

Bed Bath & Beyond has been a great customer. We also do business with Wegmans and Acme and a whole slew of the supermarkets, because, again, that’s where people are shopping these days.

The Internet has played a part in our presence. Often customers can get what they want through our Web site; that’s the part of our business that’s growing the fastest. We’ve been enjoying double-digit growth over the past three years. It’s been far outpacing everything else in the company.

One of the things that drives our growth is, we do sell nationally but at the same time we are known as a Phila­delphia area company. Being here for 100-some-years, you make some friends in the area, so we get a lot of transplanted Philadelphians, especially in Florida and the West Coast (buying online).

We ship a lot of candy to people who have formerly lived here and miss the candy. The industry used to be a lot more family business-oriented. Small candy makers, as with a lot of industries, consolidated or got swallowed up or have simply gone out of business. There is a lot less choice now.

USBR: How did Asher’s retain its identity for so long?
JA: I think we kind of fill a niche. We make an excellent quality product at a really fair price. It’s a traditional Amer­ican chocolate and we hope to get a bigger piece of the shrinking pie by maintaining that niche. We make the official chocolate of everyday life; that’s where we’ve positioned ourselves.