About Cadbury Chocolate

Cadbury chocolate has a long history. Despite its world-renowned presence in the chocolate confection business, Cadbury remains a prominent part of the economy in Birmingham where the company first originated. Cadbury continues to operate a factory as well as an amusement park based on the confectionery company in Birmingham where it all began.

Significance

Cadbury's history dates back to 1824 when John Cadbury, the son of a Quaker businessman, opened a beverage shop next to his father's drapery business. He opened the business to give the public a better choice than the alcoholic beverages he believed harmed society. His unique, stylish shop catered to the wealthy and at first sold only coffee and tea. Later, he began to create cocoa and drinking chocolate by hand in the store, attempting to improve on the newly popular French and Swiss drinks. He believed in treating his staff very well and as they ran the shop, he worked in the back perfecting his recipes.

History

The shop did very well and in 1831, John opened a small factory to make cocoa and drinking chocolate. By 1842 over 15 variations of Cadbury drinking chocolate existed. In the late 1840s, John's brother joined him in the business for a short time. The 1850s saw a reduction in the taxes paid on cocoa. This brought the prices down and chocolate became something more people could afford. Eventually, upon John's retirement, his sons took over Cadbury, determined to make it bigger and better than ever. Though sales slumped at times, they never gave up on creating a chocolate that would gain world popularity.

Function

The poor overall quality of drinking chocolates in the mid 1800s drove the brothers to search for a way to reduce the amount of cocoa butter left in the drinking chocolate after preparation. In 1866, in Holland, they found this. Through a pressing process, most of the cocoa butter was removed leaving a higher quality chocolate product. This meant that additives were no longer needed to hide the taste of the cocoa butter that had been left in the drinking chocolate through other processing means. Because of this, cocoa and drinking chocolate popularity soared.

Features

Cadbury opened a new factory in the late 1800s. The factory focused on the development of a community and improved living conditions for its employees. They worked to improve education, medical benefits and quality of life for the community as a whole. This legacy of community involvement continues within the Cadbury company today as does the original community at Bournville in Birmingham.

Effects

The new manufacturing process that resulted in a better quality of cocoa and drinking chocolate created a surplus of cocoa butter that was removed during the process. Cadbury discovered that a new confection, eating chocolates, could be made from this by-product. Boxes of eating chocolates became a major sales item during the Victorian period. Packaged in ornate, collectible boxes, some with original works of art on them, boxed chocolate sales boomed until WWI when sales declined temporarily due to the war.

Potential

Over the next few years, Cadbury continued to enlarge its factory as the next generation of Cadbury brothers became the leaders of the company. In 1897, Cadbury began production of milk chocolate confections. The first attempts used solid milk product and resulted in a dry, powdery confection. Cadbury continued to work to improve it, eventually adding fresh milk to the process. This vastly improved the eating dairy chocolates and in 1905, the future company best selling Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate was introduced. By 1913 it was the company sales leader and by 1920, Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolates outsold all other brands of milk chocolate. Advertised as containing real, full cream milk, the recipe has changed little through the years. Today, Cadbury Dairy Milk remains a world milk chocolate sales leader.