March 20, 2023 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, this is the amazing true story of David Klein, an eccentric candy inventor from Los Angeles, who is the creator and founder of Jelly Belly jellybeans. David’s eccentric personality and peculiar sense of business led him to leave Jelly Belly just as it was about to explode and grow into a billion dollar enterprise. Here’s David Klein to share the story of how he lost his beans, but kept his soul.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
a true story of David Klein, an eccentric candy inventor
from la who's the creator and founder of Jellybelly jelly beans,
my personal favorite candy. Here's David Klein to share the
story of how he lost his beans but kept his soul.
(00:33):
I was born in Syracuse, New York. We left there
when I was three and a half and I remember
nothing about it. We came to California. My dad was
the best furniture salesman in the world, and he knew
(00:54):
more about furniture than anybody alive. And when I was
growing up, I worked in a liquor store that my
aunt and grandmother owned. It was in Van Eys, right
next to a Union seventy sixth station that was owned
(01:16):
by Joe Punicello and at Punicello's father, And in those days,
if your family owned the liquor store, you could work
in there. And from the age of about seven to thirteen,
I worked in the liquor store all during the summer
(01:40):
and after school, and I got quite an experience dealing
with the public. I learned how to count money at
the age of seven, make change and all the things
that I learned there I wanted to put into a
book one day and the title of the book would
(02:02):
be everything I knew in life. I learned working in
a liquor store. And what happened was we had a
candy section there, and I would go with my aunt
once a week to Smart and Final, which was one
of the wholesale candy places. Most of the candy bars
(02:26):
back in that those days. Let's see it was nineteen
forty six plus seven, We're six for seven, paint one two,
nineteen fifty three, one two, Yeah, nineteen fifty three. Huh.
Smart and Final would display the bars, the candy bars
(02:49):
twenty four in a box, and if there was no
shrink shrunk shrink wrapped on any of the boxes, if
you wanted to taste one of the bars to see
if you like it, you would put a nickel right
in the box and then take a bar out. And
(03:10):
that way, whoever bought that box would already have a sale.
And it was I made a study of candy at
the starting at the age of seven. I would study
every bar, see where it was made, see the company
who made it, and then go to the library. I
(03:33):
did a study on Standard and Poor's Guide in the
financial reference section, and I would look to see, for example,
Baby Ruth Butterfinger. Those were made in those days by
the Curtis Candy Company. And then I followed the company
(03:55):
when it was acquired by Standard Brands, and then when
it was acquired by Nibisco, and through all of the
I would learn the history of every candy bar. When
I was in school and the teacher had to leave
the room for a few minutes, she would ask me,
(04:16):
or she or he would ask me to come up
in the front and talk about candy, and kids would
yell out names of candy bars and I would tell
them the history behind that particular bar. I went to
Van Eyes High in Van Eys, California. I graduated Van
(04:39):
Eyes High with honors and went to UCLA graduated with
a degree in economics, which is a fantastic major. While
I was at UCLA, I used to sell popcorn. I
was in the popcorn business with my uncle. Where I
would go after school, I had already taken the back
(05:01):
seat out of my car. I loaded the car with
bags of popped popcorn, and I was selling those primarily
to liquor stores. Because you can go into a liquor
store till actually two in the morning. In California, you
cannot sell liquor legally after two in the morning. So
(05:24):
I would use the have my route till about eleven
o'clock at night, would go in all kinds of areas
that I really should not have been in at night,
but I was, and nothing ever happened to me. And
then I would go home, and I'd get up at
(05:46):
six seven o'clock in the morning and go to UCLA.
After school, I would go pop the popcorn in at
water and I really learned about the food business by
doing that. In order to learn a business, it's I mean,
it's nice to read about it, but unless you really
(06:11):
get in there and get your hands dirty, you really
need to experience the business. Here's what happened in law school.
I always knew that I would never want to be
an attorney. I went there because my parents wanted me to,
(06:32):
and I also went there so that I would have
a legal background if we ever had any legal problems.
I graduated in the top of my class. When it
came to take the bar, the bar was in two parts.
(06:53):
The first part was in the morning, and then the
second part. It was a true and false test on
legal responsibility. And I never went back for the second part.
I went to get a haircut instead. I knew that
(07:15):
if I had passed the bar, which I'm sure I
would have, I would have become an attorney. And it
wasn't for me. It wasn't what I personally wanted to
do in my life. And it was almost as if
I knew I would be in the candy business someday.
(07:37):
It was almost like it was there was nothing else
for me to do. I would be in the candy business.
And there was something about candy. I liked the idea
that you could always come up with a new idea,
a new creation. And when I was in the wholesale
(07:58):
candy and nut business, one day I came up with
the idea of creating a gourmet jelly bean. Wow. I
was watching television at eight fifteen Happy Days. Happy Days
was on the air when I was talking to a
buddy on the phone. We were talking about new businesses,
(08:23):
because I always like to love to talk about new businesses,
and I said, I think I'm going to open up
a candy store and only sell jelly beans, nothing else.
And he said jelly beans. I said, yes, jelly beans.
No jawbreakers, no gumballs, just jelly beans. And I knew
(08:47):
that if that's what I concentrated on, they would have
to be special jelly beans. And that's when the idea started.
I had eight hundred dollars to my name, no credit
cards back then. The only credit card that was available
was Diners Club. The year was nineteen seventy six. And
(09:12):
you've been listening to David Klein tell the story well
of jelly Belly, and what a story it is. His father,
as he said, was the best furniture salesman in the world.
He learned so much about life simply working the register
and in essence at the local family liquor store where
he would buy supplies, buy products and services and goods.
(09:34):
He learned how to run a business, or be a
part of a business run by a family. When we
come back, we're going to find out what happens next
as one man pursues his dream. David Klein's story, the
story of jelly Belly. Here on our American Stories and
(10:09):
we continue with David Klein's story, and he is the
founder and inventor of jelly Belly and when we last
left off, he had eight hundred dollars to his name,
and he set out to create the world's first gourmet
jelly bean. Let's pick up when we last left off
ears David Klein. I approached the company that was in Oakland, California.
(10:34):
Their name was Herman Goltz Goe l I t Z,
and I asked them if they would be my contract manufacturer.
And I told him what the idea was, and they said, sure,
let's give it a shot. And in the beginning we
(10:56):
had a very hard time selling the product. Most of
the beans back in those days, our competition they were
selling for about forty nine fifty nine cents a pound,
and that's exactly what I was paying my contract manufacturer,
(11:16):
fifty nine a pound, but that's what every other bean
was retailing for. I realized that in order to get
the product off the ground, I would have to get
some publicity for it. So one day I called up
the Associated Press talked to a young man by the
(11:40):
name of Steve Fox. He was in charge of the
business section. Associated Press was huge back in those days,
and I realized that they could make or break the product.
I could have started with a local newspaper, but I
figured I'd start at the top. I didn't have enough
(12:02):
money to rent a store, so I called on one
of my wholesale customers who I sold walnuts too, and
almonds that they put in their ice cream. They had
an ice cream factory at eighteen twenty four West Maine
(12:24):
in Alhambra, and I said to them, you have your
medals from the county fair over in the corner. I
would like to have that space. This is my new product.
It's going to be called Jellybellies, and I would like
to put a little stand in there, which I will
(12:44):
pay for. So he said, okay, how much rent do
you want to pay? And I said, I can't really
pay any rent because I just don't have the funds.
And I said, how about if I pay you a
dollar for every pound that has sold, one dollar the
first dollar goes to you. He said, well, how much
(13:07):
are they going to sell for? I said two dollars
a pound. I said, I will split whenever comes in
you get the first dollar, and he said it sounds good.
So I put the stand in there. I had a
The daughter of one of the men that own the
(13:29):
ice cream parlor was a an exceptionally good graphic artist,
and she called me up and said she needed a
project for her art center school. She was at the
College of Art and Design, and she would like to
(13:50):
use jelly Belly as her term paper, and I left
it up to her. She was the one that picked
out the colors and she did the Jellybelly logo that
is still in use today. A young lad came in
one day on a bicycle and he said, I would
(14:14):
like to try one of your strawberry jelly beans. So
I had a little spoon there. I spooned out one
and I said, here, what do you think of it?
And he said, that doesn't taste like strawberry. I said, okay,
(14:35):
what does it taste like? He said that tastes like
cotton candy. And as soon as he left, I had
one of the signmakers there make me a sign that
said cotton candy. And from then on in there was
no strawberry flavor. It was cotton candy. And I never
(14:57):
got a chance to thank that young lad. He out
there somewhere. The first order jelly beans that I got
in there were eight flavors. Root beer was one of them.
I always loved root beer. The soda. I loved root
(15:18):
beer and I love cream soda, so we had a
vanilla one, and instead of calling it vanilla, I named
it cream soda. I always liked to have creative names
to all of the flavors. Instead of calling one chocolate,
it was chocolate pudding. So I tried to create as
(15:42):
many names that were different just to distinguish them from
other products. So when I told them what I wanted,
I said, I want to make a miniature jelly bean.
I didn't want the big one. It's like they used
to see in Easter baskets. And I told them that
(16:05):
the beans have to be flavored on the inside as
well as on the outside shell. That way I could
do double flavors. I could do like chocolate banana and
do the outside chocolate and the inside banana. I told
them I wanted a watermelon bean, and I wanted it
(16:27):
green on the outside and red on the inside. Prior
to jellybellies, every jelly bean that you used to see
used to be white on the inside because they made
only one center, and then they put the flavor into
the shell. If they put any flavor at all, most
(16:50):
jelly beans tasted the same, except for the black one,
the liquorice one, and so I was really the first
one to come up with the idea of flavoring the
outside as well as the inside. And that's how jelly
Belly got its start. And most days we took in
(17:14):
about twenty dollars. That was the average day until the
article came out in the Associated Press, and then I
started getting calls from department stores such as Marshall Fields
in Chicago. They said, we want to buy your beans.
(17:34):
I said, we're here in California. How did you hear
about them? Well, it was just in the Chicago Tribune.
It was also in the Detroit Free Press, it was
in the New York Times, it was in the La Times.
The article broke on the wire and it went everywhere,
(17:55):
and the product really started to take off. It took
off to the point where sales were just incredible. My
contract manufacturer actually could not keep up with the orders.
When I initially had talked to them, I asked them,
(18:18):
I said, this is going to be big, guys. I said,
are you going to be able to keep up with
you all the orders? And they said yes. And I
did not realize that they were primarily a small candy
corn manufacturer in Oakland with about ten employees, and somehow
or another, in my mind, I always picture them as
(18:40):
a larger company. The biggest mistake I ever made was
not flying up there in the beginning to see what
their factory looked like, because if I had seen it,
I would have known that they never would have been
able to keep up with production. And you're listening to
David Klein tell the story of jelly Belly, and he's
(19:01):
an innovator. There's no other jelly bean I'll eat but
jelly Belly, and I don't care how much more expensive
they are. And I know a lot of you listening
feel the same way about your beloved beans. When we
come back more of the story of jelly Belly here
on our American Stories, and we continue with the story
(19:41):
of jelly Belly and its founder, David Klein. And when
we last left off, thanks to Klein's round the clock promotion,
jelly Belly sales skyrocketed, but his contract manufacturer in Oakland
couldn't keep up with the orders. Bline told us quote,
the biggest mistake I ever made was not flying up
there in the beginning to see what their factory looked
(20:02):
like because if I had seen it, I would have
known that they would have never been able to keep
up with production. Ears Kleine with the final installment of
his story. And then O. J. Simpson was on the
cover of People magazine, the issue that I was in,
and when my contract manufacture saw the picture I had
(20:29):
on bathing shorts and nothing else, he turned to a
sales manager and said that I had blown the whole
golden goose, because nobody would buy a product from somebody
that would pose half naked in a magazine. And so
(20:55):
at that point in time, he instructed his sale manager.
They also made candy corn, and it was made on
the same equipment as the jelly beans. He instructed him,
without telling me, to sign as many contracts as he could,
to be selling candy corn at twenty nine cents a
(21:17):
pound just to keep the factory open. And I was
never told that. So here I am trying to promote
an item that I can I'm wondering why there's no
production on and what it did. It created a void
in the marketplace that other manufacturers were just happy to fill.
(21:43):
One day I got a call from the owner of
my contract manufacturing company and he said, we're coming to
town and I said, okay, great, I'll pick you up
at the airport. What airport are you fling into? And
he said it's not going to be one of those
(22:04):
kinds of meetings. And I said, well, what kind of
meeting is it? He said, we're coming to buy your
trademark and we're not going to leave until we do.
As soon as I signed the contract where we were
turning the name over to them, we were driving on
(22:25):
Rosemead Boulevard to the bank to get the contract notarized.
And while on the way there, I was sitting in
the back seat. HERM, my contract manufacturer, was in the
front seat, and he turned around and I said, HERM,
(22:49):
I have one question for you. If we were not
on our way to the bank to have this contractorized,
what would you have done? And he said you really
want to know? I said, yeah, tell me what would
you have done? He said, we would have blown back
(23:13):
to Oakland and on Monday morning we would have shut
off production to you on Jellybellies. We would have cut
you off completely. You would not have any more product.
We know you would have sued us, but by the
time it got to court, you would have been broke.
(23:34):
Those were his exact words. I can remember them today
like they were yesterday. We would have cut you off.
In fact, they told me, as we were going to
get it notarized, they had another name already picked out
that he had on the other side of his lad
(23:56):
on a piece of paper on his lap. He said,
you want to see the name that we would have
called it, and I said sure, and he showed it
to me. I don't remember what that name was, but anyway,
they took over ownership of the name. They paid us
seventeen cents a pound for the first one hundred and
(24:20):
twenty thousand pounds per month royalty maximum. Once the product
reached that level, there was no royalty at all, so
we only got paid on the first one hundred and
twenty thousand pounds at seventeen cents a pound, which came
to twenty thousand dollars per month. I split that with
(24:44):
my partner and then Uncle Sam obviously got his share
of it. And right from the beginning when I sold
it was almost like selling a member of your family,
a child jellybelly. I spent four years of my life
(25:07):
going around the country promoting the product, being on radio shows,
on talk shows, on television shows at least once a week,
and giving interviews and magazines and all kinds of media,
(25:29):
and losing the ownership of it was heartbreaking for me.
The minute they took over, they started packaging the product,
and the prior packaging had my signature on there, mister Jellybelly.
About two months later, I went into a supermarket and
(25:53):
I looked at the package and there was a computer
generated mister Jellybelly instead of my mister Jelly Bellies signature.
When they came out with a book called the thirty
Year History of Jellybellies, I was not even mentioned in
that at all, So they pretended that I never existed.
(26:19):
As soon as Colonel Sanders sold out, he was selling
Colonel Sanders. As soon as I sold out, I was nobody.
So they basically did what they could to destroy any
knowledge of me having anything to do with the product.
But for many, many years, I just did not have
(26:41):
a good feeling about creating the product. But I've come
to terms with the fact that so many people were
employed by the company. All I can tell you is
it was an experience creating a world, a product that's
got about ninety eight percent name recognition, but you have
(27:10):
to recreate yourself. Recently, we got involved in this CBD
jelly bean business. We are making jelly beans with CBD
in them ten milligrams per bean. So right now, back
into the jelly bean business after all these years. Last year,
(27:37):
around September, we started a new venture. It's called the
Gold Ticket dot Com. It's a nationwide treasure hunt. We
hide a gold necklace in fifty states, different areas, obviously,
(28:00):
and we give clues riddles. We give a riddle so
that they know where it is. The winner for each
of the fifty contests received five thousand dollars. All states
were claimed, and we received so much positive feedback on
(28:22):
that because while COVID was going on, people didn't have
too many activities that they could go to. This they
could pile everybody into a car and travel all together
and it was extremely successful. So it was so successful
that we're doing another round of that same activity. So
(28:45):
we're very happy doing that and we feel like we're
doing something really good for the world. And the one
documentary that's out there now, it's shown on Amazon and
you can watch it if you're an Amazon member for free.
(29:06):
And it's been seen all over the world. It's called
Canny Man, The David Klein's Story. My son and his
wife and Costa Botez collaborated on it. They made it
into a very good, very great documentary in my opinion
(29:28):
that will stand the test at times. So that brings
us up to date. And I love being in a business.
Or you feel that you can help people. This is America.
If you come up with a good idea, you can
(29:49):
run with that idea, make them happy. That's the whole
idea behind it. And a great job on that piece
by Greg and a special thanks to David Klein for
telling his story. David Klein's story the story of Jellybelly
(30:09):
here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
a true story of David Klein, an eccentric candy inventor
from la who's the creator and founder of Jellybelly jelly beans,
my personal favorite candy. Here's David Klein to share the
story of how he lost his beans but kept his soul.
(00:33):
I was born in Syracuse, New York. We left there
when I was three and a half and I remember
nothing about it. We came to California. My dad was
the best furniture salesman in the world, and he knew
(00:54):
more about furniture than anybody alive. And when I was
growing up, I worked in a liquor store that my
aunt and grandmother owned. It was in Van Eys, right
next to a Union seventy sixth station that was owned
(01:16):
by Joe Punicello and at Punicello's father, And in those days,
if your family owned the liquor store, you could work
in there. And from the age of about seven to thirteen,
I worked in the liquor store all during the summer
(01:40):
and after school, and I got quite an experience dealing
with the public. I learned how to count money at
the age of seven, make change and all the things
that I learned there I wanted to put into a
book one day and the title of the book would
(02:02):
be everything I knew in life. I learned working in
a liquor store. And what happened was we had a
candy section there, and I would go with my aunt
once a week to Smart and Final, which was one
of the wholesale candy places. Most of the candy bars
(02:26):
back in that those days. Let's see it was nineteen
forty six plus seven, We're six for seven, paint one two,
nineteen fifty three, one two, Yeah, nineteen fifty three. Huh.
Smart and Final would display the bars, the candy bars
(02:49):
twenty four in a box, and if there was no
shrink shrunk shrink wrapped on any of the boxes, if
you wanted to taste one of the bars to see
if you like it, you would put a nickel right
in the box and then take a bar out. And
(03:10):
that way, whoever bought that box would already have a sale.
And it was I made a study of candy at
the starting at the age of seven. I would study
every bar, see where it was made, see the company
who made it, and then go to the library. I
(03:33):
did a study on Standard and Poor's Guide in the
financial reference section, and I would look to see, for example,
Baby Ruth Butterfinger. Those were made in those days by
the Curtis Candy Company. And then I followed the company
(03:55):
when it was acquired by Standard Brands, and then when
it was acquired by Nibisco, and through all of the
I would learn the history of every candy bar. When
I was in school and the teacher had to leave
the room for a few minutes, she would ask me,
(04:16):
or she or he would ask me to come up
in the front and talk about candy, and kids would
yell out names of candy bars and I would tell
them the history behind that particular bar. I went to
Van Eyes High in Van Eys, California. I graduated Van
(04:39):
Eyes High with honors and went to UCLA graduated with
a degree in economics, which is a fantastic major. While
I was at UCLA, I used to sell popcorn. I
was in the popcorn business with my uncle. Where I
would go after school, I had already taken the back
(05:01):
seat out of my car. I loaded the car with
bags of popped popcorn, and I was selling those primarily
to liquor stores. Because you can go into a liquor
store till actually two in the morning. In California, you
cannot sell liquor legally after two in the morning. So
(05:24):
I would use the have my route till about eleven
o'clock at night, would go in all kinds of areas
that I really should not have been in at night,
but I was, and nothing ever happened to me. And
then I would go home, and I'd get up at
(05:46):
six seven o'clock in the morning and go to UCLA.
After school, I would go pop the popcorn in at
water and I really learned about the food business by
doing that. In order to learn a business, it's I mean,
it's nice to read about it, but unless you really
(06:11):
get in there and get your hands dirty, you really
need to experience the business. Here's what happened in law school.
I always knew that I would never want to be
an attorney. I went there because my parents wanted me to,
(06:32):
and I also went there so that I would have
a legal background if we ever had any legal problems.
I graduated in the top of my class. When it
came to take the bar, the bar was in two parts.
(06:53):
The first part was in the morning, and then the
second part. It was a true and false test on
legal responsibility. And I never went back for the second part.
I went to get a haircut instead. I knew that
(07:15):
if I had passed the bar, which I'm sure I
would have, I would have become an attorney. And it
wasn't for me. It wasn't what I personally wanted to
do in my life. And it was almost as if
I knew I would be in the candy business someday.
(07:37):
It was almost like it was there was nothing else
for me to do. I would be in the candy business.
And there was something about candy. I liked the idea
that you could always come up with a new idea,
a new creation. And when I was in the wholesale
(07:58):
candy and nut business, one day I came up with
the idea of creating a gourmet jelly bean. Wow. I
was watching television at eight fifteen Happy Days. Happy Days
was on the air when I was talking to a
buddy on the phone. We were talking about new businesses,
(08:23):
because I always like to love to talk about new businesses,
and I said, I think I'm going to open up
a candy store and only sell jelly beans, nothing else.
And he said jelly beans. I said, yes, jelly beans.
No jawbreakers, no gumballs, just jelly beans. And I knew
(08:47):
that if that's what I concentrated on, they would have
to be special jelly beans. And that's when the idea started.
I had eight hundred dollars to my name, no credit
cards back then. The only credit card that was available
was Diners Club. The year was nineteen seventy six. And
(09:12):
you've been listening to David Klein tell the story well
of jelly Belly, and what a story it is. His father,
as he said, was the best furniture salesman in the world.
He learned so much about life simply working the register
and in essence at the local family liquor store where
he would buy supplies, buy products and services and goods.
(09:34):
He learned how to run a business, or be a
part of a business run by a family. When we
come back, we're going to find out what happens next
as one man pursues his dream. David Klein's story, the
story of jelly Belly. Here on our American Stories and
(10:09):
we continue with David Klein's story, and he is the
founder and inventor of jelly Belly and when we last
left off, he had eight hundred dollars to his name,
and he set out to create the world's first gourmet
jelly bean. Let's pick up when we last left off
ears David Klein. I approached the company that was in Oakland, California.
(10:34):
Their name was Herman Goltz Goe l I t Z,
and I asked them if they would be my contract manufacturer.
And I told him what the idea was, and they said, sure,
let's give it a shot. And in the beginning we
(10:56):
had a very hard time selling the product. Most of
the beans back in those days, our competition they were
selling for about forty nine fifty nine cents a pound,
and that's exactly what I was paying my contract manufacturer,
(11:16):
fifty nine a pound, but that's what every other bean
was retailing for. I realized that in order to get
the product off the ground, I would have to get
some publicity for it. So one day I called up
the Associated Press talked to a young man by the
(11:40):
name of Steve Fox. He was in charge of the
business section. Associated Press was huge back in those days,
and I realized that they could make or break the product.
I could have started with a local newspaper, but I
figured I'd start at the top. I didn't have enough
(12:02):
money to rent a store, so I called on one
of my wholesale customers who I sold walnuts too, and
almonds that they put in their ice cream. They had
an ice cream factory at eighteen twenty four West Maine
(12:24):
in Alhambra, and I said to them, you have your
medals from the county fair over in the corner. I
would like to have that space. This is my new product.
It's going to be called Jellybellies, and I would like
to put a little stand in there, which I will
(12:44):
pay for. So he said, okay, how much rent do
you want to pay? And I said, I can't really
pay any rent because I just don't have the funds.
And I said, how about if I pay you a
dollar for every pound that has sold, one dollar the
first dollar goes to you. He said, well, how much
(13:07):
are they going to sell for? I said two dollars
a pound. I said, I will split whenever comes in
you get the first dollar, and he said it sounds good.
So I put the stand in there. I had a
The daughter of one of the men that own the
(13:29):
ice cream parlor was a an exceptionally good graphic artist,
and she called me up and said she needed a
project for her art center school. She was at the
College of Art and Design, and she would like to
(13:50):
use jelly Belly as her term paper, and I left
it up to her. She was the one that picked
out the colors and she did the Jellybelly logo that
is still in use today. A young lad came in
one day on a bicycle and he said, I would
(14:14):
like to try one of your strawberry jelly beans. So
I had a little spoon there. I spooned out one
and I said, here, what do you think of it?
And he said, that doesn't taste like strawberry. I said, okay,
(14:35):
what does it taste like? He said that tastes like
cotton candy. And as soon as he left, I had
one of the signmakers there make me a sign that
said cotton candy. And from then on in there was
no strawberry flavor. It was cotton candy. And I never
(14:57):
got a chance to thank that young lad. He out
there somewhere. The first order jelly beans that I got
in there were eight flavors. Root beer was one of them.
I always loved root beer. The soda. I loved root
(15:18):
beer and I love cream soda, so we had a
vanilla one, and instead of calling it vanilla, I named
it cream soda. I always liked to have creative names
to all of the flavors. Instead of calling one chocolate,
it was chocolate pudding. So I tried to create as
(15:42):
many names that were different just to distinguish them from
other products. So when I told them what I wanted,
I said, I want to make a miniature jelly bean.
I didn't want the big one. It's like they used
to see in Easter baskets. And I told them that
(16:05):
the beans have to be flavored on the inside as
well as on the outside shell. That way I could
do double flavors. I could do like chocolate banana and
do the outside chocolate and the inside banana. I told
them I wanted a watermelon bean, and I wanted it
(16:27):
green on the outside and red on the inside. Prior
to jellybellies, every jelly bean that you used to see
used to be white on the inside because they made
only one center, and then they put the flavor into
the shell. If they put any flavor at all, most
(16:50):
jelly beans tasted the same, except for the black one,
the liquorice one, and so I was really the first
one to come up with the idea of flavoring the
outside as well as the inside. And that's how jelly
Belly got its start. And most days we took in
(17:14):
about twenty dollars. That was the average day until the
article came out in the Associated Press, and then I
started getting calls from department stores such as Marshall Fields
in Chicago. They said, we want to buy your beans.
(17:34):
I said, we're here in California. How did you hear
about them? Well, it was just in the Chicago Tribune.
It was also in the Detroit Free Press, it was
in the New York Times, it was in the La Times.
The article broke on the wire and it went everywhere,
(17:55):
and the product really started to take off. It took
off to the point where sales were just incredible. My
contract manufacturer actually could not keep up with the orders.
When I initially had talked to them, I asked them,
(18:18):
I said, this is going to be big, guys. I said,
are you going to be able to keep up with
you all the orders? And they said yes. And I
did not realize that they were primarily a small candy
corn manufacturer in Oakland with about ten employees, and somehow
or another, in my mind, I always picture them as
(18:40):
a larger company. The biggest mistake I ever made was
not flying up there in the beginning to see what
their factory looked like, because if I had seen it,
I would have known that they never would have been
able to keep up with production. And you're listening to
David Klein tell the story of jelly Belly, and he's
(19:01):
an innovator. There's no other jelly bean I'll eat but
jelly Belly, and I don't care how much more expensive
they are. And I know a lot of you listening
feel the same way about your beloved beans. When we
come back more of the story of jelly Belly here
on our American Stories, and we continue with the story
(19:41):
of jelly Belly and its founder, David Klein. And when
we last left off, thanks to Klein's round the clock promotion,
jelly Belly sales skyrocketed, but his contract manufacturer in Oakland
couldn't keep up with the orders. Bline told us quote,
the biggest mistake I ever made was not flying up
there in the beginning to see what their factory looked
(20:02):
like because if I had seen it, I would have
known that they would have never been able to keep
up with production. Ears Kleine with the final installment of
his story. And then O. J. Simpson was on the
cover of People magazine, the issue that I was in,
and when my contract manufacture saw the picture I had
(20:29):
on bathing shorts and nothing else, he turned to a
sales manager and said that I had blown the whole
golden goose, because nobody would buy a product from somebody
that would pose half naked in a magazine. And so
(20:55):
at that point in time, he instructed his sale manager.
They also made candy corn, and it was made on
the same equipment as the jelly beans. He instructed him,
without telling me, to sign as many contracts as he could,
to be selling candy corn at twenty nine cents a
(21:17):
pound just to keep the factory open. And I was
never told that. So here I am trying to promote
an item that I can I'm wondering why there's no
production on and what it did. It created a void
in the marketplace that other manufacturers were just happy to fill.
(21:43):
One day I got a call from the owner of
my contract manufacturing company and he said, we're coming to
town and I said, okay, great, I'll pick you up
at the airport. What airport are you fling into? And
he said it's not going to be one of those
(22:04):
kinds of meetings. And I said, well, what kind of
meeting is it? He said, we're coming to buy your
trademark and we're not going to leave until we do.
As soon as I signed the contract where we were
turning the name over to them, we were driving on
(22:25):
Rosemead Boulevard to the bank to get the contract notarized.
And while on the way there, I was sitting in
the back seat. HERM, my contract manufacturer, was in the
front seat, and he turned around and I said, HERM,
(22:49):
I have one question for you. If we were not
on our way to the bank to have this contractorized,
what would you have done? And he said you really
want to know? I said, yeah, tell me what would
you have done? He said, we would have blown back
(23:13):
to Oakland and on Monday morning we would have shut
off production to you on Jellybellies. We would have cut
you off completely. You would not have any more product.
We know you would have sued us, but by the
time it got to court, you would have been broke.
(23:34):
Those were his exact words. I can remember them today
like they were yesterday. We would have cut you off.
In fact, they told me, as we were going to
get it notarized, they had another name already picked out
that he had on the other side of his lad
(23:56):
on a piece of paper on his lap. He said,
you want to see the name that we would have
called it, and I said sure, and he showed it
to me. I don't remember what that name was, but anyway,
they took over ownership of the name. They paid us
seventeen cents a pound for the first one hundred and
(24:20):
twenty thousand pounds per month royalty maximum. Once the product
reached that level, there was no royalty at all, so
we only got paid on the first one hundred and
twenty thousand pounds at seventeen cents a pound, which came
to twenty thousand dollars per month. I split that with
(24:44):
my partner and then Uncle Sam obviously got his share
of it. And right from the beginning when I sold
it was almost like selling a member of your family,
a child jellybelly. I spent four years of my life
(25:07):
going around the country promoting the product, being on radio shows,
on talk shows, on television shows at least once a week,
and giving interviews and magazines and all kinds of media,
(25:29):
and losing the ownership of it was heartbreaking for me.
The minute they took over, they started packaging the product,
and the prior packaging had my signature on there, mister Jellybelly.
About two months later, I went into a supermarket and
(25:53):
I looked at the package and there was a computer
generated mister Jellybelly instead of my mister Jelly Bellies signature.
When they came out with a book called the thirty
Year History of Jellybellies, I was not even mentioned in
that at all, So they pretended that I never existed.
(26:19):
As soon as Colonel Sanders sold out, he was selling
Colonel Sanders. As soon as I sold out, I was nobody.
So they basically did what they could to destroy any
knowledge of me having anything to do with the product.
But for many, many years, I just did not have
(26:41):
a good feeling about creating the product. But I've come
to terms with the fact that so many people were
employed by the company. All I can tell you is
it was an experience creating a world, a product that's
got about ninety eight percent name recognition, but you have
(27:10):
to recreate yourself. Recently, we got involved in this CBD
jelly bean business. We are making jelly beans with CBD
in them ten milligrams per bean. So right now, back
into the jelly bean business after all these years. Last year,
(27:37):
around September, we started a new venture. It's called the
Gold Ticket dot Com. It's a nationwide treasure hunt. We
hide a gold necklace in fifty states, different areas, obviously,
(28:00):
and we give clues riddles. We give a riddle so
that they know where it is. The winner for each
of the fifty contests received five thousand dollars. All states
were claimed, and we received so much positive feedback on
(28:22):
that because while COVID was going on, people didn't have
too many activities that they could go to. This they
could pile everybody into a car and travel all together
and it was extremely successful. So it was so successful
that we're doing another round of that same activity. So
(28:45):
we're very happy doing that and we feel like we're
doing something really good for the world. And the one
documentary that's out there now, it's shown on Amazon and
you can watch it if you're an Amazon member for free.
(29:06):
And it's been seen all over the world. It's called
Canny Man, The David Klein's Story. My son and his
wife and Costa Botez collaborated on it. They made it
into a very good, very great documentary in my opinion
(29:28):
that will stand the test at times. So that brings
us up to date. And I love being in a business.
Or you feel that you can help people. This is America.
If you come up with a good idea, you can
(29:49):
run with that idea, make them happy. That's the whole
idea behind it. And a great job on that piece
by Greg and a special thanks to David Klein for
telling his story. David Klein's story the story of Jellybelly
(30:09):
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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