Sweet Company

"Be good." "Be true." "Be mine." "Kiss me." "Sweet talk." For more than a century, grade-schoolers across America have been introduced to the language of love by the New England Confectionary Co. (Necco), whose "conversation hearts" -- tiny pastel candies stamped with the briefest of sweet nothings -- have become the essence of Valentine's Day. This year, Necco will produce more than 8 billion hearts, which were first introduced in 1867. And the company expects to expand capacity for next year's batch. The hearts' candy cousins, Necco Wafers, made of the same recipe, on the same manufacturing lines, are the oldest U.S. product continuously manufactured in unchanged form, dating back to 1847.

Hearts and wafers cascade from a huge, cream-colored building that sits amid the campus of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Necco factory -- the largest, most modern candy factory when it opened in 1927 -- is a bulwark against technological and confectionary faddishness. But Necco's old favorites are in such demand that they must be made year-round -- even on Valentine's Day -- to satisfy orders for the following year. "Unless Valentine's Day is a Sunday," says Walter Marshall, 66, semiretired Necco vice president and "king of hearts." "We don't manufacture on Sundays."

Today the hearts are made in the same way that they were made in the first decade of the last century. In some cases, they may even be made on the same equipment that they were made on then. Indeed, Necco looks like a company that is operating in another era. It has a portfolio of nostalgic brands: Clark bars, Mary Janes peanut-butter candies, Mighty Malts, multicolored candy buttons on strips of paper, and a whole line of Haviland boxed mints and chocolates. The manufacturing tools that make Necco's sweets seem quaint, if not archaic. In a world where some companies are nothing but marketing, Necco does no consumer marketing. It has been privately held since 1963 by UIS Inc., an old-fashioned conglomerate that also owns Champion oil filters. Necco's annual revenue -- $100 million or so -- doesn't even amount to $1 million for every year of the company's history.

Necco has survived merciless consolidation in the candy industry by being old-fashioned where it counts -- and modern where it matters. The company's chief executive is notoriously frugal, and despite five acquisitions in the past 10 years, Necco is debt-free. But in its practices, Necco is strictly new economy: The company prides itself on the flexibility and nimbleness that is needed in order to deliver mass quantities of custom candy to retailers just the way those retailers want it.

"I think of Necco as a Model T Ford," says Marshall, "with a Corvette engine in it."

Hearts by the Ton

The man who first made Necco wafers was a Bostonian named Oliver Chase. He made what at the time were called "lozenges," and he used a lozenge-cutter that he invented and patented in 1847, and that was the first American candy-making machine. Chase retired from the candy business in 1888. But if he were to return today, he'd have no trouble understanding what happens 18 hours a day at the 74-year-old Necco plant.

Conversation-heart dough is mixed in 550-pound batches. The taste and texture are distinctive, but the ingredients are simple: pulverized sugar, corn syrup, corn starch, xanthan gum, color, and flavor.

A man standing over a hopper feeds in chunks of the batter, which are pressed through mechanical rollers that look like the clothes wringer on an old-fashioned washing machine. What emerges is a sheet of pastel-colored sugar dough about a yard wide. A set of printing dies stamps the sayings on the sheets in edible red ink, and the hearts are cut. (Necco has 100 sayings for the hearts, and a handful change each year. This year's new ones focus on a space theme, inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

The printing-and-cutting machines are mounted in forged-steel frameworks that either are the originals, dating back to 1911, or are identical to the originals. Kevin Brennan, a 38-year-old machinist who has been at Necco for 16 years, routinely consults the original blueprints and patterns when fixing, updating, or replicating the machinery. "We have plans and blueprints from as early as 1908," says Brennan. "Use 'em all the time."

But the way in which Necco pushes the machinery to perform wouldn't have been possible in 1908. Each candy-heart machine, driven by computerized electronics, pumps away at 158 strokes a minute -- nearly three strokes a second -- producing 80 small hearts with each stroke. In a minute, one machine produces 12,640 hearts. In a typical 9-ounce bag, there are 280 hearts. In a single minute, in other words, one candy-heart machine produces 45 bags of hearts -- a lifetime's consumption for most people.