Across Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley, grocery stores have already set out their Easter candy displays. Shelves are filled with familiar seasonal items such as Cadbury eggs, Peeps, and chocolate bunnies. One product typically associated with the region’s Easter traditions is absent this year: the chocolate eggs produced by Zitner’s Candy.
For many people in the Philadelphia area, Easter has long included Zitner’s chocolates. Among the best-known is the Butter Krak Egg, a chocolate-coated candy with a coconut and buttercream center. Other varieties regularly purchased during the holiday season include the Double Coconut egg and the Peanut Butter egg. This spring, shoppers searching for those products in local stores are not finding them.
The situation first came to attention after Delaware County resident Carl Stieger visited several grocery stores and discovered the candies were missing. During stops at his neighborhood Giant, Acme, and Wawa locations, he could not find any Zitner’s products. With Easter about a month away, Stieger contacted Billy Penn to describe what he called a “very dire situation.” He also wrote that he was concerned about what might happen if people could not obtain their yearly supply of Butter Krak…