There’s no better way to say this.
There’s a guy in Chicago who’s the master of M&M’s — like, all of them.
He’s one of seven people in the world who knows the secret of how the little, white, lowercase “m” is printed on the candy.
His name is Matthew Kradenpoth, and he’s in charge of tinkering with new flavors, troubleshooting at manufacturing plants around the world and making sure that every time you open a pack of M&M’s it’s exactly as you remembered.
He’s pretty low-key about it. No personalized license plates or anything like that.
“I actually talk very little about what I do, I’m not big on going on about myself,” he said in an interview next to a wall of M&M’s dispensers in the cafeteria of the Mars Wrigley global headquarters on Goose Island. “I don’t know why because I have, like, the greatest job.”
Kradenpoth, whose title is senior principal scientist of product development, listens to podcasts or reads his book on liquid rocket propellant on his commute from Naperville. He grew up in New Jersey, supports the Giants and sympathizes with the Bears, and knows all of the places that appear in the opening credits of “The Sopranos.”
With a love for science and a degree from Rutgers University he could have gone into plastics or rubber, but... ptooey! You can’t eat that stuff.
“Do I want to work with all [those] chemicals, or do I wanna [say]: ‘Oh, man, I got some chocolate on my hand,’ ” he said, looking down at his hand.
“Oh, that looks good,” he said, pantomiming a lick.
“Chocolate is just like one of those things like pizza: How can you ever get sick of it? If anything, I like it more than I did before I joined Mars,” said Kradenpoth, who favors Peanut M&M’s and swears he hasn’t had a cavity in years.
Kradenpoth moved with his wife and twin sons to Chicago five years ago from a town not far from Hackettstown, New Jersey, home to one of three U.S. manufacturing facilities that make M&M’s. The company operates a plant on the Northwest Side that manufactured Snickers and other products, but it’s slated to close this year.
The molding process that creates the candy’s signature lentil shape, how to apply the hard candy shell, the proper amount of carnauba wax for that sheen — it took years to learn, according to Kradenpoth, 45.
“There’s no textbook on any of this stuff. And even if they kidnapped and tortured me to try to get me to tell them something, my knowledge it only goes so far,” he said with a laugh, noting that there’s too much for one person to house all the information on how M&M’s are made.
The company is opening a $40 million innovation hub on Goose Island next year with a test kitchen and a small-scale production facility to test the manufacturing of new products. The new digs will help expand the company’s “flavor pantry” of ideas that get thrown against the wall.
Bacon-and-chocolate is a flavor scientists may have kicked around, said Kradenpoth with a smile, but it never came to market.
Not surprisingly, “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” was one of Kradenpoth’s favorite movies growing up.
“My mom always connects it to the reason why I worked for Mars,” he said with a slight eye roll.
His favorite scene in the movie? The chocolate waterfall and river that Augustus Gloop falls into while taking a sip.
“Just the idea as a kid, thinking: ‘My God, you can just pick up anything in the room and eat it!’ ” Kradenpoth said.
Maybe the closest thing to make-believe at the Goose Island site is a machine that emulates human chewing to test chewiness. Mars Wrigley’s chewy products include gum, Starburst and Skittles.
Kradenpoth has also worked on chocolate bars, including Snickers and Milky Way, but M&M’s have been his focus for years.
“I have fun every day,” he said. “I work in a lab where I can eat what I’m making. I bring joy to millions of people every day. We make billions of M&M’s a day, and I have a big part in that, and that’s really freaking cool.”
Oh, and some people may mistakenly think the name of the candy originates with the “mmmmm” sound many make as the chocolate candies melt in their mouths. Actually, it’s for the initials of the last names of the men responsible for its creation: Forrest E. Mars Sr., an executive whose father founded the company, and Bruce Murrie, the son of Hershey executive William F.R. Murrie.
