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How many pieces of taffy are in a pound?
Believe it or not, this is a very common question. You wouldn’t be here reading it if it wasn’t.

Though this number has changed throughout the years due to upgrades in equipment, the current amount of pieces of our World’s Most Famous Taffy™ in a single pound is now approximately 68-70 pieces. Of course, the amount of number pieces per pound made by other taffy companies will vary as we all make different shapes and sizes. Here at Zeno’s, we manufacture a “kiss” style of taffy as oppose to a log style which is very popular on the Jersey Shore and the Smokey Mountains.

Currently, we use 2 different high speed cut wrap machines. One is known as a Rose 503 CTW, and the other is known as a Forgrove 42C. Both of these machines have the ability to cut and wrap taffy at speeds of 450 pieces/per minute. That is approximately 6.5 pounds per minute. Not too shabby!

These machines also use a very limited amount of paper and provide a very tight twist and wrap. Our old cut wrap machine known as a Model K, which is still used widely in more of the Mom and Pop shops today, cuts and wraps approximately 110 pieces per minute. You can see these machines running in many different taffy stores across the USA.

This machine does a great job, but it does use a lot more paper to wrap the taffy and the twist isn’t as tight as some of the higher speed machines. It does, however, have one advantage. If you were giving a 1 pound of taffy to a friend as a gift, candy produced from a Model K does look like more candy than if made from one of the high speed machines. But, as a candy maker, I just always wanted to make sure that if a customer was paying for a pound of taffy, they were in fact paying for the candy, and not so much for the paper. Who wants to ear paper anyways?