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Haribo makes and sells gummy candies, most famously Goldbears, and sells them all over the world.
Haribo is a candy company, and it makes the chewy, fruit-flavored gummies that show up in checkout lines, movie theaters, and kids' birthday parties almost everywhere. Its most famous product is the Goldbear, the little translucent gummy bear that comes in five colors and has been the company's signature since the 1920s. The company also sells plenty of other shapes and flavors, but the bear is the heart of the brand.
The business is simple at its core: Haribo buys sugar, glucose syrup, gelatin, flavorings, and colorings, cooks them into gummy shapes, bags them, and ships them to supermarkets, convenience stores, and wholesalers. Customers pick Haribo because the brand is trusted and the candy is consistent — a bag of Goldbears tastes the same whether you buy it in Germany, France, or the United States. That reliability, built over a century, is why Haribo can charge a bit more than a generic gummy and still sell enormous volumes. Haribo is still a private, family-owned company, run by the descendants of its founder, Hans Riegel. It is headquartered in Bonn, Germany, and it operates factories across Europe and in Turkey and the United States. Being private means it does not chase quarterly earnings targets the way public companies do, and it can take a long view — which it has, expanding steadily into new countries while keeping the recipe and the mascot basically unchanged.
In 1920, Hans Riegel started making sweets in his own home kitchen in Bonn, with little more than a sack of sugar, a stove and a rolling pin. His wife Gertrud became the first employee a year later. The company took its name from his: HAns RIegel BOnn — HARIBO.
Two years in, Riegel came up with a small gummi bear he called the Dancing Bear. It became the seed of everything HARIBO would grow into — and in inflation-hit Germany, two of them cost just one Pfennig.
Founder Hans Riegel died in 1945, and war shortages had hit production hard. His sons Hans and Paul took over from their mother — Hans running marketing and sales, Paul running production — and rebuilt the business from just 30 employees. Within a few years it had around a thousand.
The Dancing Bear got its famous upgrade: Goldbears hit the market in 1960 and quickly became the company's flagship. A few years later, the German Patent Office made the name an official trademark.
HARIBO entered the UK by buying Dunhill's, a liquorice maker with roots back to the 18th century. It was the start of a simple playbook: grow abroad by buying local sweet makers.
HARIBO began selling fruit gums in the US from sales offices in Baltimore. Sales took off — so much so that gummi bears soon drew a crowd of competitors into the market.
HARIBO bought the Maoam chewy sweets brand and its production rights from Edmund Münster. Maoam grew into one of HARIBO's key brands, especially in the UK.
Long-time head Hans Riegel died in 2013, and his stake passed to the Hans Riegel Foundation. The holding company was rebuilt so the Paul Riegel and Hans Riegel families each own half.
The US had been importing HARIBO for decades; now it would make sweets there. A huge plant in Kenosha County, Wisconsin — announced back in 2017 — started production and began turning out Goldbears. Making them locally keeps prices low against imports.
HARIBO set a worldwide sales record, up about 4.5%, with new products driving roughly a quarter of growth. Gummies were increasingly replacing chocolate in seasonal buying, especially among younger adults, and the company's sweets were selling in nearly 200 countries.
The US business entered a new phase under a new president, Jon Hughes, formerly head of HARIBO UK and Ireland. It opened the company's first-ever US retail stores, in New York and Massachusetts, with pick-and-mix and exclusive merch. US retail sales had more than tripled since 2016, and more than four in ten American households now bought HARIBO.
The gummy business is not glamorous, and it comes with real pressures. Sugar and gelatin prices move around, and health-conscious shoppers in rich countries are eating less candy, which pushes Haribo to sell smaller portions and sugar-free versions. Rival gummy makers compete hard on price, and store brands have gotten good. Still, Haribo's scale — it is one of the largest candy makers in the world — and its brand loyalty give it a durable edge that few competitors can match.
Saved answer · last researched 2 Nov 2026