Now and Later - History

History

The Phoenix Company goes back to 1919, when a little candy company in Brooklyn, New York, was turning out penny saltwater taffy. In 1953, Harry and Joseph Klein, a New York father and son team purchased the Phoenix Candy Company from Charles Cari. The company was originally located in the Bush Terminal neighborhood of Brooklyn, in New York City. They began manufacturing Atlantic City style Salt-Water Taffy, Peanut Brittle and Halloween candy. In 1962, the Klein's brought in vacuum cookers to replace open fire kettles to save on cooking and cooling time. They brought in a German-made machine that produced 150 5 cent bars per minute and began production of Now and Later taffy candy bars. The name was selected to suggest to customers that they eat some of the taffy squares in the bar right away and save the rest for another occasion. By 1976, the Kleins expanded the business to 16 machines which ran 2 shifts per day, 6 days a week. In 1978, Joseph Klein sold the Phoenix Candy Company to Beatrice Foods.

On March 16, 1978 the Fortnightly Club of Redlands wrote the following about Joseph Klein:

Joseph Klein is considered in a man of great ingenuity and business acumen. He expanded his Brooklyn-based, salt-water taffy business into a multi-million dollar candy business. Few of us have not heard of the copyrighted name, "Now and Later". It is a ten-cent candy bar of nine beige-colored squares. Candy bars are generally consumed in a few minutes. This bar, being taffy and being divided into nine portions, gives about thirty minutes of delectable, drooling, many-flavored, teeth-decaying chewing. The "kids" could eat some now and save some for later. Hence the name, "Now and Later". "Now and Later" was the "brain-child" of Joseph Klein. The October 15, 1976, Forbes quotes Mr. Klein: "In the salt-water taffy business (his original business) you work ten months of a year and ship two months, so you need a lot of capital and you're constantly building inventories. We decided that the secret of this business would be something you could ship year-round and get paid for in ten days." The something was the "Now and Later". A trial run of the candy bar in New York was a success. Now Joseph Klein had to find a machine to produce the bar economically.

He found it in Germany. It could produce 150 bars a minute. Again quoting Mr. Klein in the Forbes article: "In September or October of 1966 the product took off. From then on we were buying one or two machines a year. We had a tiger by the tail and we had to keep up with it."

And keep up with it, they did! In 1976 Mr. Klein had sixteen candy making machines that ran two shifts each day, six days a week. Each machine makes 150 bars a minute. If my computer is correct, Mr. Joseph Klein produces over two million bars each day. Barring (no pun) breakdowns and strikes, that is about 700 million candy bars annually. What a lot of tooth aches! And all from Joseph Klein!

The original Now and Later colors were red, green and blue. The company merged with Leaf in 1983, and sold it to Nabisco in 1992. Now and Later's are currently produced by Farley's & Sathers which bought it in 2000 following Kraft/Philip Morris acquisition of Nabisco. Throughout its lifetime, Now and Later's have added many new flavors. Twenty-four flavors are currently available.