Chocolate Wars

by Deborah Cadbury

  The story of the House of Fry opens in Bristol at a time when the city had more in common with the Tudor period than the modern world. Born in 1728 into a Quaker Wiltshire family, Francis James Fry’s great-grandfather, Joseph Fry, who had trained as an apothecary, came to Bristol as a young man seeking an opportunity.

  At the time, Bristol was the West Country hub for trade and as a port was second only to London. On the quayside, the harbor opened onto a forest of rigging and sails from a multitude of ships arriving from the New World. The port was packed with sailors, slaves, and merchants, the air heavy with the scent of rum and tar; and marvels from the New World, such as sugar and cocoa, were unloaded into wagons and warehouses. In the eighteenth century, the Flying Coach was the fastest public transport from Bristol to London. With relays of fresh horses staged down the line, it was possible to reach the capital in two days.

  Joseph Fry, a sober figure in his dark Quaker clothes, took a tiny shop in Small Street and began his apothecary business in 1753, when it was still customary to keep jars of leeches in the window. As a sideline to his pills and potions, he sold cocoa, which he promoted as a health drink because he was convinced it was a highly nutritious alternative to alcohol. Fry’s chocolate drink became popular in the fashionable nearby town of Bath, known as “the first city of pleasure in the kingdom.” Smart coffeehouses appeared overnight, promoting the chocolate drink to the aristocracy.

  In just eight years, Joseph Fry was in a position to take over the leading cocoa manufacturer in the area, Walter Churchman. Fry’s cocoa consisted of the oily cocoa flakes and powder in suspension in liquid, and Churchman’s drink was clearly superior. Churchman’s secret rested on a patent he had taken out in 1729 for “an invention and new method for the better making of chocolate by an engine.” It was a water-powered machine that enabled him to create a much finer cocoa powder than anyone else. Once Fry secured the recipe, his Churchman’s Chocolate became very popular.

  Joseph Fry was inventive and seized his chance to develop the business. By 1764, he had agents promoting his products in no less than fifty-three towns and was in a position to open a warehouse in London. In 1777, he moved his cocoa factory to larger premises on the fashionable Union Street, then on the banks of the River Frome, and he used water power to drive the cocoa-grinding mills. His business interests were many and varied, and under his concerned gaze and industrial “green fingers,” everything he touched flourished. He also owned a share in the Bristol China Works, created a type foundry in London, was a partner in a large soap- and candle-making business in Bristol, and bought a share of a chemical works in Battersea. Some feat for a businessman before the age of railways, telegraphs, and telephones and with little support beyond the Flying Coach and the Penny Post.

  In 1795, Joseph’s son, Joseph Storr Fry, inherited the cocoa business and continued to develop the Union Street works. Since the water flow from the River Frome was not reliable, he took the remarkable step of installing one of James Watt’s first steam engines. To the astonishment of the workers, this clanking, hissing, mechanical marvel transformed cocoa production and was soon regarded as “one of the wonders of the World.” According to Fry’s records, the steam power from this engine was diverted “by means of a vertical shaft carried up through the factory” to the third floor, where it turned Britain’s first “mechanically driven machine for grinding Cocoa Nibs.” News that someone was using a Watt steam engine for food manufacture elicited comments from across the country. “We are credibly informed,” marvelled the Bury and Norwich Post on June 6, 1798, that “Mr. Fry of Bristol has one of these Engines—improved by an ingenious Millwright of the city—for the sole purpose of manufacturing Cocoa. It is astonishing to what variety of manufactures this useful machine has been applied!”

  Apart from installing a steam engine to grind the beans, Joseph Storrs Fry received a patent from King George III to build a new kind of machine to roast the beans, which he installed in the factory next door. Doubtless he was gratified to find The Times full of praise on August 8, 1801, for the “excellent articles produced from his celebrated manufactory.” By the time George Cadbury’s father was opening his tea and chocolate shop in Birmingham in 1824, the Frys were using nearly 40 percent of the cocoa imported into Britain and enjoying annual sales of £12,000.

  In 1835 the business passed to the third generation of Frys. Brothers Joseph II, Francis, and Richard continued to develop the site on Union Street and pioneered new brands. They launched Pearl Cocoa, which countered the heavy oiliness of their cocoa drinks with the addition of arrowroot that absorbed the cocoa oils. Since Pearl Cocoa contained less costly ingredients like molasses and sugar, it could be cheaply priced to attract poorer households and it became a huge seller. Homeopathic Cocoa took advantage of the burgeoning interest in health. For the upmarket consumer, they introduced a finely ground Soluble Cocoa, which was slightly less gritty. All these products cost a fraction of what it cost to manufacture them a hundred years earlier, when their grandfather’s best cocoas, at over seven shillings per pound, cost as much as the average farmworker received for his weekly wage. These new variations cost around one shilling per pound while their workers were earning ten shillings per week.

  Fry was noted not only for its innovation but also for the austerity of its Quaker founders. One worker who recorded the atmosphere of the firm in the mid-nineteenth century recalls “primitive and paternalistic” conditions. “The quiet of Union Street was even more marked between 9:00 to 9:20 when all employees attended a morning meeting,” he records. “It was not uncommon to see passers stop to listen admiringly to the peaceful strains of a hymn sung by our girls and workmen as a prelude to the working day.”

  As Richard and George were struggling to establish their firm in Birmingham during the 1860s, according to Fry’s Works Magazine, “so great had become the expansion of our trade,” that the factory was inadequate to deal with “orders pouring into the House from every quarter.” Fry had travelling salesmen in no less than fifty towns at a time when Cadbury’s only traveller, Dixon Hadaway, covered the whole of the north of England and Scotland in his pony and trap. George learned that a single Fry traveller with a flair for sales managed to secure ninety-five accounts in just four towns: Cheltenham, Stroud, Worcester, and Gloucester. Gloucester alone bought £10,000 of goods. In the age of the steamship, Fry also benefited from the Bristol docks that linked the company to Queen Victoria’s burgeoning empire and an ever-expanding horizon. To cap it all, they took advantage of Bristol as a leading naval base and won a contract to supply the British Navy—almost doubling their orders overnight. For the military, cocoa was valuable because it was easy to transport in tins and warm and filling for the troops.

  From the Cadbury brothers’ loss-making warehouse in Birmingham, the Frys appeared invincible. George knew he had a great deal to learn, and travelling with Francis James Fry gave him the chance to find out more about their latest pioneering inventions.

  In 1847 the Fry brothers introduced a novelty into the Victorian market. They had experimented with mixing their cocoa powder with its by-product, the excess cocoa fat. Whether by accident or design, they hit upon a way of blending the two ingredients with sugar to make a rich creamy paste. This concoction was then pressed into a mold and left to set. The result: the first solid chocolate bar in Britain. It was a breakthrough: a way of mass-producing a chocolate product that could be eaten instead of being consumed as drink. This made chocolate portable and turned it into a totally new kind of snack—to carry on the railways or to bring to work. They called it Chocolat Delicieux a Manger.

  Fry’s new product, however, did not appeal to anyone with a really sweet tooth. It was bitter, coarse, and heavy and probably only of interest to the dedicated few who also possessed a strong jaw. Initially sales were slow. Undeterred, the Fry brothers had glimpsed a sweeter, more solid future. They set to work on more recipes for chocolate confectionery that could be produced in bulk. Secretly they expe
rimented with a new kind of white minty cream. This was made by boiling sugar in an open pan, whipping it to an opaque creamy consistency, and adding mint flavoring to give a fresh taste. After the minty cream had cooled and been cut into sticks, these were dipped in luxurious dark chocolate. By 1853, Fry’s frock-coated travellers were opening their sample cases to reveal a brand new product: Fry’s delectable chocolate-coated Cream Sticks. Shopkeepers were amazed when they tasted the first chocolate confectionery produced on a factory scale; it was rich and satisfying, a real treat. Better still, mass production meant that the price was significantly lower than handmade confections.

  The recipe proved to be a success, and within a few years it was brilliantly reformulated as a new type of chocolate bar. The chocolate for these “morsels of delight” according to Fry’s literature, was formed into a thin, light paste. The mint cream was set in hundreds of tiny molds and taken to covering rooms, where “scores of young damsels” with chocolate trays coated the batches. In 1866 the first wagonloads of Fry’s Chocolate Cream found their way throughout Britain to the grocers and sweetshops. Preliminary sales of Fry’s minty chocolate sensation may have been modest, but there was growing interest—and not just from customers.

  French chocolatiers, who had long held a reputation for exquisite handmade confections, were also exploring ways to produce them in bulk. Just outside Paris at his chocolate works on the River Marne in Noisiel, Emile Menier hit upon a process not dissimilar to Fry’s. He inherited his business from his father, a chemist, who had originally used cocoa sweetened with sugar as a coating for his pills. Emile developed the cocoa side of his father’s business and by the mid-nineteenth century, he had created a method for pressing dark chocolate into a mold. Wrapped in chrome yellow paper, it was the first solid chocolate bar made in France, and it proved so successful that Menier’s output quadrupled in ten years, reaching 2,500 tonnes in the mid-1860s, a quarter of the country’s total output. Emile was able to invest more funds in his factory at Noisiel. Originally powered by a humble water mill, the factory was now equipped with shining new steam turbines, creating such a splendid spectacle that the locals called it “the cathedral.” Much of Menier’s chocolate was exported, and like many Europeans, he had his eye on the dense populations in Britain’s industrial towns. Soon he was in a position to open a factory of his own on Southwark Street in London.

  To improve the texture of his chocolate and increase his production, Menier needed extra cocoa butter, the fatty part of the bean. He found a ready supplier in Holland—in Weesp, near Amsterdam, where a cocoa-making family firm was run by Coenraad van Houten. Somehow the Van Houtens had managed to solve a problem that had eluded everyone else: how to mechanize the separation of the fat content from the rest of the cocoa bean. As a result, his cocoa was purer and more refined than anything else on the market, and he had cocoa butter, as a by-product, for sale. Exactly how he achieved this was a trade secret, but there was no secret about his sales. Van Houten had agents building up a sales list in London; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Dublin, Ireland.

  A regular traveller to London, George Cadbury could not fail to notice the new products: a purer form of cocoa made by the Dutch and eating chocolate manufactured as solid bars in bulk. In the 1860s, sales of eating chocolate were modest—nothing compared to the established drinking cocoa brands in England. Even so, like a flag planted on new territory beating against the wind, it pointed the way to unlock the potential hidden inside the little chocolate bean.

  George was at a loss. He recognized that the Fry family was better placed than anyone else in Britain to take on the foreign competition. Although none of their cocoas matched the quality of Van Houten’s pure Dutch cocoa, Fry of Bristol was the cocoa metropolis of the world. Their four factories on Union Street, towering eight stories high, seemed as secure as their granite and concrete exteriors. Just as their towering citadel dominated the town, so the bounty within dominated the market. The variety and sheer abundance of Fry’s chocolate temptations put them in a class of their own. They were indeed a beacon, a light to follow.

  The Cadbury brothers did not have the money to invest in the molding machinery that would mass-produce such luxurious temptations as a chocolate bar. Their inability to produce a popular product and make a profit was becoming critical. With no significant funds for investment, Richard and George struggled on producing cocoa as a drink mixed with the questionable starches to absorb the fat. Their new products, Iceland Moss, Pearl Cocoa, Breakfast Cocoa, and others, had failed to make an impact, and their losses continued to mount.

  In response to yet another grim stocktaking, it fell to Richard to tackle overdue accounts. “We made the lowest class of goods,” George wrote later, and consequently they had some of the “least desirable custom” who were not always ready or willing to settle their debts. “The small shopkeepers were constantly failing,” he continued. Some went under without paying—putting Cadbury at risk of going under as well.

  The brothers had resolved, whatever happened, not to take on any liabilities that they could not meet and not to turn to their father for additional funds. In Victorian tradition, their only sister, Maria, now in her thirties, had postponed any thoughts of marriage to devote herself to caring for their father. The oldest brother, John, after a brief attempt at farming in the West Country, had made the bold decision to immigrate to Australia. He sailed from the East India Docks in London on December 17, 1863, on the ninety-day journey for Brisbane. Their younger brother Edward was embarking on a home-decorating business and the youngest, Henry, was still in his final years at school.

  Richard and George determined that rather than assume the risk of taking on a debt, they would shut the business if they spent their entire inheritance. They continued to work relentlessly, spending long days on the road selling their cocoas to reluctant grocers and returning to the warehouse to pack the orders themselves if hands were short. The shortage of money was proving a strain at home. Richard’s oldest son, Barrow, later recalled an outing when the family had gone to Pebble Mill. His mother, Elizabeth, suddenly felt unwell, but both his parents elected “to tramp all the way back again when his father would have given so much, had he been able, to take her home in a cab.”

  Unfortunately, the brothers’ industry and virtue made no difference. At the end of four years, they were facing disaster. “All my brother’s money had disappeared,” George admitted. “I had but 1,500 left—not having married.” There were insufficient funds left in their inheritance to develop a business desperate for capital. George knew the enterprise was dying for want of mechanization but they dared not risk additional loss. “I was preparing to go out to the Himalayas as a tea planter,” said George. “Richard was intending to be a surveyor.”

  The Cadbury business was all but dead.

  CHAPTER 5

  Absolutely Pure, Therefore Best

  BIRMINGHAM 1866

  George Cadbury was considering one final reckless gamble. It would consume every last penny of his inheritance. As long as he did not fall into debt or risk the great disgrace of bankruptcy, he believed it was a risk that had to be taken.

  The more George learned about the Dutch manufacturer Coenraad van Houten, the more intrigued he became. Van Houten was having great success exporting his refined, defatted cocoa to Britain from his steam factory in Weesp. Dixon Hadaway told him that Van Houten’s cocoa was so popular it was on sale in regional towns like Leeds and Liverpool as well as in the capital. Gradually George began to realize that this was the model he should follow. Refined cocoa surely held the key to the future.

  George discovered that the key to Van Houten’s success lay with an invention Coenraad had developed with his father, Casparus, more than thirty years earlier. The Van Houtens recognized that established methods of boiling and skimming the bean resulted in an indigestible cocoa consisting of over 50 percent cocoa butter. After experimenting with different designs of mechanical grinders and presses, they eventually perfect
ed a hydraulic press that reduced the cocoa fat to less than 30 percent. The flour and other less appealing extras that had been used to sop up the fat were no longer required. The result: a purer, smoother drink that tasted more like chocolate and less like potato flour.

  The Dutch process was a trade secret and no one in England, not even Fry, had discovered a way to manufacture a purer cocoa. George pondered: Could this be the way to best their English rivals? Would the Dutch be prepared to sell their machine? If they had such a machine, could the brothers turn the factory around using the spare cocoa butter to create fancy chocolates like the French? Suddenly George could see a business future that made sense. Instead of using the cocoa bean to create one type of product, a fatty and adulterated cocoa, he could create two distinctly different products—pure cocoa and eating chocolate—using the most appropriate bit of the bean for each. A whole new set of possibilities opened up—if he could get hold of the machine.

  “I went off to Holland without knowing a word of Dutch,” said George, “saw the manufacturer with whom I had to talk entirely by signs and the dictionary.” They were locked in discussion in Van Houten’s factory: George, plainly dressed, earnest, frustrated by the language, and absolutely sure that the odd-looking machine would save the Cadbury factory, was desperate to charm and persuade and take home the prize.

  Mr. Van Houten succumbed. The defatting machine was sold to the Quaker gentleman. The records do not reveal the agreed-upon price, but it is likely that the purchase used up much of George’s remaining funds—around £1000. George made shipping arrangements to get the monstrous prize back to Bridge Street. It arrived by canal, and the sturdy cast-iron apparatus, a full ten feet tall, was hard to maneuver into position from the wharf into the chocolate works. Worse, the thing was very greedy; to make it economical, George had to feed the giant hopper with a large amount of beans. They had to find a way to increase volume, and fast.