In 1920 , Hans Riegel , a down - on - his - luck , 27 - year - erstwhile confectionary doer from Bonn , Germany , quit his problem and began making sweets in his kitchen using just a marble slab , a kettle , and bags of dough . His first creations were grueling , colorless candies that he sold to local stores and at street festival . He had one employee : his wife , Gertrud , who deliver the candies on her wheel .
As for hiscompany name , Riegel decide to combine the first two missive from his first name , last name , and his hometown : HansRiegelBonn , or Haribo .
Riegel ’s sweets sell decently , but what he really wanted was to make something that could abide out from the competition in confect - saturated Germany . He noticed that gummy confect , including wine drops , gumdrops , and Jujubes , were in particular democratic , but their shapes were uninspired . withdraw the dancing bears thatdelighted child at festivalsthroughout the country during that time , Riegel decided to make a bear - shaped chewy confect .
Riegel ’s Tanzbären ( or “ dancing bears ” ) werelonger and slimmerthan gluey hold nowadays , and sell two for around one penny . They also come in one color : atomic number 79 . To get that typical chewy tone , Riegel used gelatin , a chemical compound once jimmy by the wealthy that was becoming wide available . Kids , as you may imagine , go crazy for Tanzbären , and within 10 years Riegel had grown Haribo ’s social station from one employee to more than 160 . By the meter World War II broke out , the company had more than 400 employee and produced candy by the ton .
World War II put a serious dent in yield , whittle Haribo down to just 30 employees . Riegel pass off in 1945 . After the war end , Riegel ’s Word , Hans and Paul , resurrected the caller , and within five years had pumped the labor force back up to more than 1000 .
In 1960 , Haribo was looking to expand internationally and came out with the smaller gummy bears sell today . The company called the newfangled creation Gummibärchen , or “ trivial gummy bears , ” and in 1967 finally introduced multicolor varieties . In 1975 , Haribotrademarked the nameGoldbären , or “ aureate bears , ” paying tribute to the brand ’s other age .
These daylight , Haribo seduce more than 100 million gummy bears every mean solar day and has manufacturing plant all over the humanity — a far cry from the bantam kitchen in Bonn , Germany where it all started .
