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| John Cadbury |
The British love their sweets, and the average adult consumes 30kg of sugar a year. I was very surprised when I bought a Cadbury Chocolate while in London at how much better it was than the American version. Turns out that Hershey owns a license to manufacture Cadbury in the U.S. Cadbury allows some leeway to license owners to change parts of the formula.
John Cadbury was a small candy shop owner in Birmingham, England when he
developed an emulsification process to make solid chocolate - creating the modern chocolate bar. Before this, chocolate was a treat that people could only drink. Because John was a Quaker, he believed that alcohol was bad for society and tea, coffee, cocoa and drinking chocolate were healthy, delicious alternatives. In 1831 the Cadbury manufacturing business started to produce chocolate on a commercial scale from a warehouse on Crooked Lane.
His brother David Boddy joined the business in 1848 and they rented a large factory on Bridge Street in Birmingham. The district around the factory has been ‘dry’ for over 100 years. No alcohol is sold in pubs, bars or shops. In March 2007, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco attempted to sell alcohol in its local store and the town won the court battle to prevent it.