A One Man Business 1824-1830
John Cadbury’s parents were Quakers and he came from a big family. He opened his first grocer’s shop at 93 Bull Street (a fashionable part of Birmingham) in 1824, next door to his father’s drapery and silk business. He started young – he was only 22 at the time.
He sold hops, mustard and a new sideline – cocoa and drinking chocolate made with cocoa beans imported from South and Central America and the West Indies. John Cadbury prepared them himself with a pestle and mortar, which must have been a time-consuming business! They were expensive and only the wealthiest Birmingham families would have been able to afford them.
He experimented with his products and produced a range of both cocoa and drinking chocolate, which had sugar added to it. The products were sold in blocks: customers then scraped a little off into a cup or saucepan and added hot milk or water.
Soon John Cadbury was one of Birmingham’s leading tradesmen, and growing sales of his cocoa and drinking chocolate meant that he decided to concentrate on this area.
From Salesman to Manufacturer 1831-1846
With growing sales of cocoa and drinking chocolate, John Cadbury decided to make them on a bigger scale. In 1831 he rented an old malthouse in Crooked Lane to use as a factory. This was the real beginning of the Cadbury manufacturing business.
Cocoa beans have a lot of fat in them in the form of cocoa butter, and at this time manufacturers mixed starches like potato flour and sago into them to try and balance it and make it more digestible. By 1842 John Cadbury was selling sixteen sorts of drinking chocolate and eleven cocoas.
The earliest preserved price list shows that you could buy drinking chocolate in the form of both pressed cakes and powder. They had names like ‘Churchman's Chocolate’, ‘Spanish Chocolate’, and ‘Fine Brown Chocolate’. Cocoa was sold as flakes, in powder and cocoa nibs, and was called things like ‘Granulated’, ‘Iceland Moss’, ‘Pearl’ and ‘Homeopathic’ cocoa. With names like that it’s fascinating to think what the ingredients might have been!
The Cadbury Brothers 1847-1860
Business was booming, so in 1847 John Cadbury rented a larger factory right in the centre of Birmingham on Bridge Street. He took his brother Benjamin into partnership and the family business became Cadbury Brothers of Birmingham.
The shop in Bull Street carried on, and in 1849, a nephew of the brothers, Richard Cadbury Barrow took over running it, and the name changed to Barrow Stores. The shop traded in Central Birmingham right through to the 1960s.
In some ways business on the manufacturing side was good. The Prime Minister, Gladstone, had reduced taxes on imported cocoa beans in 1832, so more people could afford cocoa products. Cadbury Brothers opened an office in London in 1853, and received their first Royal Warrant on February 4 1854 as 'manufacturers of cocoa and chocolate to Queen Victoria'.
But the mid-1850s became the most difficult times in Cadbury’s history. John Cadbury’s second wife died and he became ill with rheumatic fever. Meanwhile a more established rival company, Fry, was proving tough competition. The business started making a loss, and the partnership between the first Cadbury Brothers was dissolved in 1856.
John Cadbury was in poor health, so he handed the reins to his sons Richard and George.
The Sons Take Over 1861-1865
Richard and George Cadbury were just 25 and 21 when they were put in charge, and although they’d both worked for the company for a few years, it was still a daunting prospect. Other cocoa manufacturers were going bust, and they must have been worried that Cadbury Brothers would soon be joining them.
They had a lifeline though – they each invested £4,000, left to them by their mother when she died. It was the equivalent of about £600,000 today, but it didn’t solve all their problems. Their first five years were incredibly hard work, with few customers, long hours and frugal living.
Both brothers considered taking up other vocations: Richard as a surveyor in England and George as a tea planter in India. But they stuck it out. Both worked at promoting their goods to the trade, though in general George dealt with manufacturing and Richard with selling.
Thanks to their dedication and hard work, plus innovative products and an improvement in quality, the business survived and prospered. But what was the turning point? A new processing technique, and the resulting product: Cadbury Cocoa Essence.
The Big Breakthrough 1866
The Cadbury Brothers weren’t entirely happy with the quality of the cocoa they were producing because of the starches they had to add to it, to mask the taste and feel of the cocoa butter. George Cadbury had heard about a press being used by a Dutch manufacturer called Coenraad Johannes van Houten.
The press squeezed out much of the cocoa butter from the beans, so it wasn’t necessary to put starches in the cocoa. Could this be the way forward?
Buying the press was a massive gamble. It was expensive and the brothers were nearly out of money. It had to be used for mass production and no one knew if there’d be enough demand for the resulting product. But the Cadbury Brothers decided to go for it – the first British manufacturers to go down this route.
It was a momentous step, one which changed the British cocoa business and led to the future prosperity of the Cadbury business. With the press installed in Bridge Street, Cadbury Brothers' new product appeared: Cocoa Essence. It was extensively advertised as ‘Absolutely Pure…Therefore Best’, with medical testimonials attached.
It was the marketing of Cocoa Essence that helped sales increase dramatically and turned a small business into the worldwide company that Cadbury is today.
The move to Bournville 1878-9
Now employing 200 people, Richard and George Cadbury needed a bigger factory, but instead of looking at another city location, they chose a greenfield site four miles from the centre of Birmingham. There were practical reasons why it appealed: canal and rail links, roads that could be developed and an efficient water supply.
But just as important was its countryside location – the Cadbury family were Quakers and believed in treating their workers well. At Bournville workers could live in far better conditions than in the crowded slums of Birmingham.
On June 18th 1878, an ideal site was found for the new factory: fourteen and a half acres of land between the villages of Stirchley, King's Norton and Selly Oak, about four miles south of the centre of Birmingham.
The site was a meadow with a cottage and a trout stream – the Bourn. The cottage isn’t there any more, but the pear tree from its garden still stands outside the main Cadbury reception at the Bournville factory.
The site had many advantages:
• The Worcester and Birmingham canal adjoined so that barge loads of cocoa beans could reach the factory directly from Bristol docks
• To the east it was bordered by the Birmingham West Suburban Railway
• On the southern edge was a country lane, Oak Lane, now called Bournville Lane, which could easily be improved for road transport
• Water was in good supply
• There was lots of room for expansion and to fulfill the Cadbury brothers' vision for the future.
First of all the factory was going to be called Bournbrook, after the cottage and Bournbrook Hall which stood nearby. But instead the name 'Bournville' was chosen – 'Bourn' from the stream of that name and 'ville', the French word for town. At the time, France, and French confectionery in particular, were very much in vogue.
A Birmingham architect, George H. Gadd, working closely with George Cadbury, drew up plans for the factory. Production began at the Cadbury Brothers' 'Bournville factory in a garden' in September 1879.
Cadbury Brothers Limited and Eating Chocolate
Richard Cadbury died in 1899 and the business became a private limited company: Cadbury Brothers Limited. George Cadbury became Chairman of the new Board. His fellow directors were Barrow and William A. Cadbury (sons of Richard) and two of his own sons, Edward and George Cadbury Junior.
By this time the Bournville factory had trebled in size, with more than 2,600 employees. The younger members of the Board introduced new ideas: analytical laboratories, advertising and cost offices, a sales department, works committee, medical department, pension funds, education and training for employees.
And it wasn’t just about making chocolate. Everything needed for the business was produced on site, with tin box pressing plants, carton making units, a design studio and printing plant.
Things stayed like this until after the Second World War, when it was decided that it made more sense to keep the production and marketing of chocolate confectionery at Bournville, and use specialist suppliers for everything else.