On a late October morning in 2015, word spread through Lititz that Cargill would close the Wilbur Chocolate factory on North Broad Street in January. For a town whose air had smelled of chocolate on warm days for generations, the news landed hard.
Residents flooded social media with reactions. Many wrote simply that it broke their hearts. Others shared memories of school field trips, of the candy museum and of the smell that drifted over Lititz Springs Park. Some had parents and grandparents who had worked on the production lines.
What Cargill announced
Cargill, the Minnesota-based agribusiness company, had owned Wilbur Chocolate since 1992. The company said it would end production at the downtown plant in January 2016. More than 100 jobs were expected to be affected, most of them in production, and there were early reports that some positions at Cargill’s separate facility on West Lincoln Avenue could also be touched.
The decision came just months after Cargill completed its purchase of ADM’s global chocolate business, a $440 million deal that reshaped its cocoa operations worldwide. We covered that acquisition at the time: Cargill Sweetens Chocolate Holdings with ADM Acquisition.
The Wilbur retail store, beloved by visitors for Wilbur Buds and other candy, would stay open. That promise mattered to downtown merchants who depended on the store as a tourist draw.
A century on North Broad Street
Wilbur Chocolate traces its roots to H.O. Wilbur & Sons of Philadelphia, founded in the 1880s. Chocolate-making on the North Broad Street site dates to the early 1900s, and the factory became one of the town’s defining landmarks over the following century. Wilbur Buds, the small flower-shaped chocolates first made in 1894, became the company’s signature product and a symbol of Lititz itself.
For decades, the plant was one of the borough’s major employers and the anchor of its north end. It also gave Lititz its nickname among visitors as a chocolate town, a distinction it shared with Hershey to the west.
What happened after the closing
Production ended in January 2016, and the factory’s contents were sold that summer. An industrial auction company offered more than 1,000 lots online, from chocolate lines and grinding equipment to forklifts and office desks. Our restored story on that sale: Wilbur Chocolate Factory Items Set for Auction.
The retail store moved to a new home at 45 N. Broad St. in October 2016, where it continues to sell Wilbur Buds.
In May 2017, Oak Tree Development Group, whose principals also owned the Lancaster Barnstormers, announced plans to redevelop the 11-acre property. The group bought the site for $2.25 million in January 2018. The plan converted the historic brick factory into The Wilbur Lititz, a 74-room hotel in Hilton’s Tapestry Collection at 50 N. Broad St., which opened in September 2019 with a restaurant and market. Apartments, condominiums and a senior living community filled out the rest of the site in a project valued at more than $60 million.
The redevelopment also displaced Little League fields that had been used behind the factory for years, a decision that drew strong local reaction. We restored that coverage here: Barnstormers Owners Plan to Bump Little League from Wilbur Fields.
The legacy
Today the Wilbur name still hangs over North Broad Street, and the brick factory buildings remain, now housing hotel guests and residents rather than chocolate lines. Wilbur Buds are still sold in town. For many longtime residents, though, the closing marked the end of an era in which Lititz was a place where chocolate was made, not only sold.
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