Each Day, Illinois Produces A Crazy Amount Of A Certain Candy
With a little over 3 weeks to go before Valentine's Day, it's no surprise to see all sorts of stories being published about Valentine's candy. There are articles all over the place about the candies we love, the candies we hate, each state's favorite and least favorite candy...yada, yada, yada.
Since I already know what I love (100 Grand bars, Snickers, Skittles), and what I hate (Candy Corn, Circus Peanuts, popcorn balls with cat hair on them), I thought it would be fun to look at quantities.
In particular, the absolutely massive numbers of candy produced each day by some candy manufacturers, including right here in Illinois.
Tootsie Rolls Are Probably Not The Top Candy On Most Of Our Favorites Lists, But They're Still Beloved, And Tootsie Roll Industries Is Literally Making Tons Of Them
And they're making them right here in Illinois at 7401 S. Cicero Avenue in Chicago, where they've been cranking them out since the company moved to Chicago in 1968.
According to the Tootsie Rolls website, on average, 64 million Tootsie Rolls are produced every day. Taking those numbers and moving outward, we find that 64 million Tootsie Rolls per day means that they're knocking out:
- 44,440 every minute
- 740 per second
- 23 billion Tootsie Rolls per year
Just think, all of that work only to have someone leave one of them in their pocket or purse until the Tootsie Roll looks like this:
Tootsie Rolls Produce A Huge Amount Of Product, But Skittles Make Even More
Not to say that Tootsie Rolls and their 64 million pieces per day isn't impressive, it's just that Skittles, according to their website, produces 200 million pieces per day, which breaks down to 70 billion per year.
Here are a couple more candies, along with their production numbers:
Peeps produces 5.5 million per day, which works out to being 2 billion every year.
Hershey's Kisses (called that because of the sound that the machine producing them makes) are cranked out at a rate of 70 million per day, or 25.5 billion a year.