Chocolate for Eating
When Cadbury started making Cocoa Essence they had lots of cocoa butter left over, and a bright spark had a most excellent idea – wouldn’t it be nice to use it to make a solid bar of chocolate!
Cadbury milk chocolate for eating hit the shelves in 1897, but it wouldn’t be much to our taste now. Made of cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar and milk powder paste it was coarse and dry and not sweet or milky enough to be a big hit.
In fact French and Swiss manufacturers were way ahead of Cadbury, but George Cadbury Junior set out to challenge them. He created a recipe using fresh milk, and in 1905 a new product was launched – Cadbury Dairy Milk. And by 1913 it had become the company’s best seller.
In 1915 another new product appeared that’s still hugely popular – Cadbury Milk Tray. It was stylish, but no frills, enough to be an everyday sort of chocolate box – not just for very special occasions.
Between the wars
Cadbury already had close links with J.S. Fry & Sons Limited, and in 1919 they signed an agreement, creating a new holding company, the British Cocoa and Chocolate Company, to take over the assets of both businesses.
Fry’s organisation and factory needed a lot of work, and a new site was found for their business outside Bristol.
Fry’s was a difficult business to pick up, but it did have some good things going for it – Countlines. Countlines were popular in America and Canada; they were chocolate bars with different centres and got their name because they were sold by bar, not by weight – Crunchie, Fudge and Picnic are all examples.
In the 1920s Cadbury became an international business. 1921 saw the opening of Cadbury’s first overseas factory in Tasmania, followed by more in Canada, Dublin and South Africa. This was also the time when factories became mechanized, allowing Cadbury to drop their prices. The business was so well organised and established that none of their competitors could get near them in terms of quality and value.