After 100 Years, Low-Fat Treat Keeps Rolling

At 76, Melvin Gordon is like a kid in a candy store, snatching pieces of gooey Tootsie Roll from the assembly line and savoring the taste.

“There’s nothing like a hot Tootsie Roll,” the chairman of Tootsie Roll Industries Inc. says as he licks the oozing candy from his fingers.

It has been 100 years since candy maker Leo Hirshfield came up with the treat and named it for his 5-year-old daughter, Clara, his little Tootsie. A century ago, electric lights had just begun to flicker across America, and Utah had just been added as the 45th state.

Now, Tootsie Roll makes enough candy each year to stretch from the Earth to the moon and back.

Tootsie Roll’s main product--a concoction of sugar, milk, corn syrup and cocoa--has endured during a general slump in the candy bar industry, as have its other treats, including Mason Dots, Charleston Chews, Sugar Daddys and Charms Blow-Pops.

Total company sales exceeded $300 million last year, making it the No. 6 candy maker in the United States with about 7% of the U.S. non-chocolate candy market, said company President Ellen Gordon, Melvin’s wife.

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Success hasn’t stopped Tootsie Roll from being run like a family business by the Gordons, who own a controlling stake in the company.

Ellen Gordon is the link to the Tootsie Roll dynasty. In the 1920s, her mother bought some of the company’s shares for about $8.25 each and encouraged relatives to do the same.

By the 1930s, the family owned a controlling interest; today the Gordons hold about 50% of the company’s stock. Melvin Gordon has been chairman since 1962, and his wife joined him as president in 1968, after raising their four daughters.

The Gordons work hard to keep up the family atmosphere--greeting employees by name at the company’s Chicago plant and allowing the 1,700 workers at five plants to eat their fill of sweets while on the job.

“They have a wonderful balance sheet, minimal debt, terrific return on sales, outstanding brand-name recognition, and management that are totally committed to the shareholders because they are the biggest shareholder of all,” said analyst Elliott Schlang, who writes an independent newsletter on mid-size Midwestern companies.

The company has paid dividends for 53 years, increased sales each year for the past 19 years, and boosted earnings annually for the past 14.

The Gordons’ success also stems from their aggressive expansion overseas, and their products are now sold in South America, the Far East, Middle East and Eastern Europe.

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The company has tried other sweet ventures, including caramel-and-apple-flavored lollipops and brightly packaged Mutant Fruitants, suckers that change colors and flavors on the way to a Tootsie Roll center.

As for the Tootsie Roll, much of its continued success is attributed to its low price--individual Tootsie Rolls still sell for 1 cent--taste and low-fat heritage.

Six pieces come with the same 3 grams of fat as the day the first chunk was made, so Americans often chomp into the bite-sized treats with little worry about their waistlines, says Susan Smith, spokeswoman for the National Confectioners Assn., a trade group.

“I see in Glamour and other magazines where they recommend you have a Tootsie Roll because it’s small and not high in fat,” Smith says.

Oddly enough, Tootsie Rolls aren’t classified as chocolate under the definitions federal officials use to collect data on the candy industry.

Gone are the days when some Tootsie Rolls came with peanuts or raisins, but the basic Tootsie Roll endures.

“Nothing can happen to a Tootsie Roll. We have some that were made in 1938 that we still eat,” Melvin Gordon said. “If you can’t bite it when it’s that old, you certainly can lick it.”