Mars chocolate is owned by an American global corporation, Mars Inc., which is a privately owned company. It was founded in 1920 by Ethel Mars and has become one of the largest confectionery brands in the world. The most famous are Snickers, Milky Way, Twix, Bounty, Skittles and, of course, Mars.

Frank C. Mars and his second wife Ethel started a candy factory in 1911 in Tacoma-Washington known as the Mars Candy Factory. In 1920, the factory moved to Minnesota under the name Mar-O-Bar, but the name failed to inspire brand loyalty and was changed to Mars Inc. upon incorporation.

Mars was well known for its rather unique chocolate bar called the Milky Way in the 1920s. It sold well and helped the company grow.

Mars introduced the Snickers chocolate bar in the early 1930s. This bar was named in memory of a favorite horse in the Mars family. However, this did not turn out to affect sales much. Subsequently its bar sales increased to levels above those of the Milky Way bar. Frank and Ethel Mars’ son, Forrest Mars Sr. joined the family business after it was formed, but disagreements in the family over Forrest’s desire to experiment with new products and promote them outside the US led to a split. and Forrest moved to England, where he formed Mars Limited in Slough.

In 1932, Forrest was given $50,000 and the recipe for the Milky Way bar after things got sour and he was told to follow his own destiny. When Forrest arrived in England, he found that the Milky Way bar did not measure up to European tastes. The new product could not be called the Milky Way, so it was called Mars, and it proved to be a quick success in England and other European nations.

After Frank Mars’ death in 1934, Forrest Mars Sr. took over Mars Inc and Mars Limited along with his sister Patricia. Forrest returned to the US and the company was merged as Mars Inc. Mars continued to sell and market the Milky Way and Snickers bars in the US, while the Snickers bar was introduced under the Marathon name in Europe. .

Forrest was on a sales trip to Spain during the 1930s. He witnessed soldiers in the Spanish civil war eating chocolate pearls. Sensing a market for the little chocolate pearls, he attempted to develop his own recipe.

As the company has continued to grow, new factories in new markets outside of Mars, Inc. have become traditional UK and US markets.

A chocolate factory in Veghel in the Netherlands opened in 1963 and expanded by producing other foods in the Mars family of products. It is the largest or second largest chocolate factory in the world owned by Mars.

Environmentalists criticized Mars chocolate that the company has not publicly endorsed or supported the fair trade movement. Mars responded by stating that its own program of sustainable development and partnership with cocoa farmers was a more progressive approach.

A former independent company called Dove Chocolate acquired by Mars Inc. in 1986. The company developed non-traditional sales channels out of party plans and private distributors working from home. Mars Inc has successfully introduced new chocolate brands to the market since the 1990s.

In 2009, Mars published a book titled ‘Chocolate: The North American Experience’ in association with the Smithsonian Institution. It was a history of chocolate production and cocoa processing in North America from the earliest times.