Forrest Mars Sr. names a company after his mother.

Ethel M Chocolates was founded in 1981 in Henderson, Nevada, a city in the Las Vegas Valley, by Forrest Mars Sr., the man who had run Mars Inc., the family candy business whose brands include M&M’s and Milky Way. Fortune reported in 1988 that he had retired from Mars in 1973; by 1979, the Henderson Home News reported, he was planning a new candy venture in the town.

The company is named after his mother, Ethel Mars — Ethel Gale Mars, born Kissack, not to be confused with her former husband Frank Mars’s second wife, Ethel V. Mars. Forrest and his mother had moved to the Las Vegas Valley in 1975, and she lived there until 1980, according to English Wikipedia, which cites a newspaper obituary. Ethel M says Forrest created the company “a way to celebrate someone he held dear — his mother,” and Wikipedia, citing Joël Glenn Brenner’s 1999 book The Emperors of Chocolate, says the chocolates are made to recipes created by her.

The location was chosen with care, local reporting at the time suggests. The chocolates were made without preservatives, so they had a short shelf life, and the tourist traffic of Las Vegas promised quick sales; the Henderson Home News also reported in 1979 that Henderson was chosen for its clean air, as chocolate picks up odours. A third reason was legal: Nevada was one of two states, with Kentucky, that allowed large quantities of liquor in candy, and Ethel M quickly became known for its liqueur-filled chocolates — five of the 24 varieties it offered in its early years, the Associated Press reported in 1983, and sold only in Nevada.

The factory began operating in March 1981. Forrest Mars lived in an apartment above it during the 1980s while he oversaw the business, the Las Vegas Sun reported; the space was later turned into offices.

One factory, a cactus garden and a tour window.

Ethel M has one kitchen. The Henderson factory is the sole production facility for Ethel M chocolates, the Las Vegas Sun reported in 2011, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal put its output at about 8 million pieces a year in 2016. Fillings including peanut butter, caramel and fruit creams are made on site. Between 1996 and 2003 the plant also made seasonal candies for other Mars brands, including Dove, Milky Way and Snickers, the Review-Journal reported in 2003, and it has served Mars as a test kitchen for new sweets.

The factory is also a visitor attraction. Part of it is open for free self-guided tours, with windows onto the production lines, and it has a shop and a chocolate and wine tasting room. The Review-Journal counted about 700,000 visitors a year in 2011 and about a million a year, including the garden, in 2016.

That garden is the brand’s most distinctive asset. The Botanical Cactus Garden, about three acres beside the factory, opened in September 1981, and the company describes it as Nevada’s largest cactus garden, with more than 300 species — cacti and succulents of the American Southwest alongside desert trees and shrubs from the Southwest, Australia and South America. Since 1994 it has been strung with holiday lights each winter, growing from about 50,000 to some 500,000 bulbs, and since 2015 it has had a Valentine’s display called “Lights of Love,” according to local press.

The site has an environmental side too. In the mid-1990s Ethel M added an on-site water-treatment system that cleans the factory’s wastewater for reuse on the landscaping, the Henderson Home News reported in 1994, and it was folded into the garden tour. In 2011 a 4.4-acre solar array was built to help power the factory, VegasInc reported in 2012.

The desert runs through the company’s own language. It says each box “embodies what makes the desert so unique — it hides wonders that surprise and delight,” calls its pieces “chocolate gems,” and lists flavours such as prickly pear and sea-salt caramel; it now says the chocolates are made with no artificial flavours or colours.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all American: Ethel M, See’s Candies, Russell Stover, Fannie May, Lake Champlain Chocolates, French Broad Chocolates and Endangered Species Chocolate. Together they cover much of the range of American chocolate and candy, from the gift box bought for a holiday to the single bar picked up at a grocery checkout.

American boxed chocolate grew up around the shop front. Many of the country’s candy companies began as a single kitchen or store selling to local customers, and some built chains of their own shops, while others moved into drugstores, supermarkets and seasonal aisles. The assorted box, with its printed lid and its paper map of fillings, became a familiar gift, and regional makers came to be known as much for a place as for a product. More recently, small makers have added bean-to-bar chocolate, cafés and factory tours, and bar brands have used the wrapper itself to carry a story or a cause.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded it, who owns it now, where its cocoa comes from and where its chocolate is made — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a founder’s venture to a Mars subsidiary.

The business grew fast. Brenner wrote that Ethel M reached annual sales of about $150 million through some 70 stores in the western United States. In 1988 it was bought by Mars Inc., according to English Wikipedia, citing Fortune and Lawrence Allen’s book Chocolate Fortunes, and it has remained a Mars subsidiary since; the Washington Business Journal described it as one, headquartered in Henderson, in 2018. Ethel M had 50 stores across Arizona, California and Nevada in 1991, the Los Angeles Times reported, but it later pulled back, partly because long shipping times did not suit a chocolate without preservatives; by 2003 it had 500 workers and 15 shops, 13 of them in Nevada.

Mars has tried to stretch the name. In 2005 it opened Ethel’s Chocolate Lounges in the Chicago area, with a separate, higher-end Ethel’s Chocolates line also made in Henderson, and in 2006 a Nevada lounge at the Fashion Show mall on the Las Vegas Strip. The Chicago lounges were closed in 2009 during the recession, Crain’s Chicago Business reported.

In 2017 Ethel M revived two old Mars bars — the original Mars bar, discontinued in 2002, and Forever Yours, discontinued in 1979 — Food & Wine and the Review-Journal reported. The same year it became a partner of the Vegas Golden Knights ice-hockey team, and for its 40th anniversary in 2021 it sponsored the NASCAR driver Kyle Busch at the Las Vegas race, returning in 2022.

Today the company calls itself “American Luxury Chocolate” and “Luxury Chocolate Excellence Since 1981.” As of 2024 it had nine shops in the Las Vegas Valley and one at the Glendale Galleria in California, according to its store list, and it also sells online and through other retailers.

For a design guide, Ethel M shows how a place can become the brand: a desert garden, a factory window and a founder’s mother. Compare See’s Candies, another western boxed-chocolate chain, and Guittard, the San Francisco chocolate maker. For this guide we use saguaro green, desert sand and prickly-pear pink with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Ethel M’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.