money & economicsanalysisWikipedia1824–1860s · Birmingham, England

Cadbury began as a Birmingham tea and cocoa shop run by a Quaker, and later invented milk chocolate in Britain

the gist

John Cadbury, a Quaker, began selling tea, coffee and drinking chocolate in Birmingham in 1824, and moved into cocoa production in 1831. In 1842 he started selling chocolate for eating, perhaps the first in Britain. His sons turned the business around in the 1860s by focusing on chocolate and improving cocoa quality. In 1905 the company launched Dairy Milk, the first milk chocolate bar that a British company could mass-produce. The Bournville factory was built in 1879 in countryside outside the city, with a model village for workers.

how it works

Cocoa butter had to be separated from the bean so that chocolate could be shaped smoothly. A cocoa press developed in the Netherlands removed some of this unpalatable fat, and later a process with more milk produced the milk chocolate that became mass-market.

so what

Cadbury's model village and its Quaker values shaped how industrial companies treated their workers. Its milk chocolate bars helped turn chocolate from a luxury for the wealthy into a mass-market treat. Bournville remains a famous example of a planned company town.

the bigger pattern

Several companies, such as Cadbury and Nestlé, built model villages or welfare programmes for workers in the 19th century. Paternalistic company towns are a documented pattern of industrial Britain.

fun fact

Cadbury Dairy Milk has had a distinctive purple wrapper since its launch in 1905.

more on this

Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Illustrative photo · TheNuggeteer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons