George was keen to push through another huge gamble, which doubtless was the cause of much cap wringing. Although their adulterated cocoas were still making money, they cancelled some of their most popular lines, such as Homeopathic, Pearl, and Breakfast. They were handing their rivals a huge advantage. But George was clear: He wanted the Cadbury name to stand for quality. The debate about purity triggered by Cocoa Essence showed no signs of slowing. But by cancelling strong-selling lines, would he have enough orders to support his cavernous new factory? The skeptics saw it as another irresponsible step.
And there was still the issue of the factory itself. No amount of altruism and good intentions could get around the fact that there was nothing quite like Bournville in England and no evidence that it would work. Cynics and skeptics alike watched the bold experiment in quality, fresh air, and wholesome living, waiting for any sign of failure. Most thought it was only a matter of time.
BRISTOL, ENGLAND, 1870S
In Bristol, with Francis Fry and his brothers at the helm, Fry’s business continued to prosper. They adopted a different approach to expansion and saw no need for the radical innovation of their Birmingham rivals. As they outgrew their sprawling premises in Union Street, rather than gamble on the huge investment of a brand new factory, they chose to expand piecemeal, acquiring outlying premises, often at some distance from the main factories in Union Street. Little by little, they acquired some twenty-four separate buildings of varying suitability, and chocolate goods in varying stages of manufacture were taken by horse-drawn vans from site to site through the busy, narrow streets of Bristol.
Francis Fry’s team also saw no rush to find an answer to Cadbury’s pure Cocoa Essence. Cadbury’s invention had made it possible for the public to create a chocolate drink at home as easily as tea, but the Frys followed suit at a leisurely pace. Two years elapsed before they installed Van Houten presses. When they finally launched their pure new product, Fry’s Cocoa Extract, they failed to see the need to promote it heavily. It was only when Cadbury’s Cocoa Essence was outselling Fry’s brands, which had been established over generations, that Fry’s board began to ponder how they might seize the initiative in the adulteration debate. As the Cadburys were moving into Bournville and taking the bold step of eliminating their adulterated cocoas to focus their efforts on one superior brand, the Frys were still making almost fifty different types of cocoa, all of which had to be transported at least a mile to various premises during its manufacture.
Taking advantage of the docks at Bristol, Fry excelled at overseas expansion. There is evidence that Fry sent a traveller to Johannesburg in southern Africa as early as 1800. Fry’s chocolate tins reached Queen Victoria’s troops during the Crimean War during the mid-1800s. The Navy found that Fry’s brands, without the benefit of the defatting machine, fitted their requirements perfectly. They were easy to transport, filling and nutritious, and worthy accompaniments to the ship’s biscuit. Fry had long-established trading links between Bristol and Ireland. And the company pioneered sales in Britain’s fast-growing empire.
In 1867 the British North America Act established Canada’s role as a dominion within the British Empire. This same act also made provision for the Intercolonial Railway in Canada, which would make rail connections possible from the eastern port of Halifax on the Atlantic coast inland to the St. Lawrence River. From here goods could reach the vast interiors of the North American continent via the grand highway of the Great Lakes. This unknown territory was finally opening up. Francis Fry hired agents to investigate.
He learned that there was little in terms of chocolate production in Canada in the 1870s. Local, family-run confection businesses were producing penny candy in glass jars and earning barely $3 million a year between them. With Canadian grocers willing to try Fry’s products, they began to ship goods from Bristol across the Atlantic. From Medicine Hat to Moose Jaw, Grand Falls to Niagara Falls, bright yellow tins of Fry’s Breakfast Cocoa waved the flag for English manufactured chocolate goods. For British immigrants and loyalists, it brought great comfort during the bitter Canadian winters.
For the Fry management team leading this change, “the Fry spirit,” built on centuries of Quaker values, remained all-important. Concern for their workers’ welfare was paramount. Unlike Bournville, they had no space around the factories to provide recreation grounds, but their wages were generous compared to many local firms, and they organized choral and dramatic societies and clubs to provide games, libraries, and night-school teachers. Although Francis Fry continued his work for the community, his religious convictions took a more esoteric form compared with his Quaker counterparts in Birmingham. Gradually, “as the years rolled by and his business cares devolved on others,” wrote his son Theodore, he dedicated himself to his consuming passion to understand different versions of the Bible. This interest went well beyond that of an antiquarian, observed Theodore, for the Bible was his father’s “daily companion” in a “far higher sense.” His belief in it “as the revealed will and love of God to man was bright and strong.” Francis’s long-nurtured dream was to understand the most faithful version of the actual “word” of God.
As Francis Fry’s reputation as a biblical scholar spread, his correspondence mounted. He was in touch with an ever-expanding list of like-minded collectors. One day a copy of the Codex Sinaiticus arrived from the Russian czar, Emperor Alexander II. This fourth-century Greek manuscript, containing the earliest complete version of the New Testament, had been found at the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai and leaves were removed for publication during the 1840s and 50s. Francis Fry was “so gratified” to have such a precious tome to study that he thanked the czar with a complete set of all his biblical works.
Fry’s efforts to trace early English translations of the Bible threw up some puzzling findings. His quest to track down the original “Great Bible” produced in 1539 by the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was thwarted by the fact that King Henry VIII had ordered 21,000 copies, one for every church in England. Despite his attempts to track down the master version, Francis Fry found “copies bearing the same date differed from each other in various parts,” according to Theodore. He located 146 copies, and sometimes “as many as forty lay open on the table at one time,” continued his son. No one “so critically examined them, or recorded his labours with such exactness.” Watermarks and even “all such differences in spelling” were carefully recorded. In Matthew 10, line 38, “saying” could also be “sayige,” “sayinge,” “saying,” “sayenge,” and “sayig.” In his forensic quest to find the true word of the Lord, Francis Fry’s collection of 1,300 Bibles and testaments rapidly became one of the best in the world. It is perhaps hardly surprising, given where his energies were focused, that Francis Fry gave scant attention to the swiftly moving chocolate market.
Around the time that the Cadbury brothers moved to Bournville, both of Francis Fry’s brothers died. In 1878, Francis retired and followed the custom of promoting to chairman the oldest son from the next generation—in this case, his nephew, Joseph Storrs Fry II. This Joseph was cut from the same cloth as his Uncle Francis. Shy and introverted, he did not marry and dedicated himself almost exclusively to the chocolate business and the Society of Friends.
As a child, Joseph Storrs Fry II had been mocked at school for his plain Quaker dress, an experience that did not appear to shake his adherence to the strict rules and values of the Society. Like his uncle, he was keen to keep Quaker tradition at the center of the business, and his daily routine was, in the words of a relative, “extraordinarily conservative.” Rather than strike out in a bold new direction, he obligingly followed his uncle on many issues.
So the chocolate factory continued to operate in various sprawling buildings across town, irrespective of their suitability. The packing department moved to an old Baptist chapel. Numerous other departments jockeyed alongside each other for space. Although new products were produced, there were no notable innovations. The Bible stud
y and hymn singing continued. Joseph Storrs Fry II was a keen champion of causes such as the Bristol City Mission and the campaign for the suppression of opium traffic. According to Fry company records, “his charitable gifts were almost numberless.” Like his uncle, he was an enthusiastic follower of the British and Foreign Bible Society. And also like his uncle, he remained convinced there was no need for change.
YORK, ENGLAND, 1870S
While the House of Fry sailed blithely through the swiftly changing markets of the late-nineteenth century, and the Cadbury brothers embarked on a series of calculated risks, Joseph Rowntree in York struggled to keep his business afloat. In the 1870s his product list included all manner of delicious temptations, including Shilling Cocoa, Shield Chocolate, Chocolate Drops, the irresistible Half Penny Balls, and other more wholesome foodstuffs, such as Food for Infants and medicinal fruit salts. Yet there was nothing that had enraptured the northern palate.
Joseph Rowntree persisted in his stance against innovations such as advertising and marketing. This extended to keeping a watchful eye on shop owners who bought the right to rebrand Rowntree products. One such owner was Blanks, who relabelled Rowntree’s Homeopathic Cocoa and took the liberty of adding a couple of words to the package that might actually prompt the customer to buy it. The luckless Blanks soon heard from his supplier. “It is not a pure ground cocoa,” Joseph stormed. “It is not produced from the finest Trinidad Nuts. It is not the best for family use. In fact the whole thing is a sham, not very creditable to anyone concerned with it.”
Joseph Rowntree wanted his consumers to benefit from his high trading standards, but he also wanted to bring benefits to his workers. He and and his brother Henry had a reputation as fair employers, but with the business struggling in the depression of the 1870s, good intentions were not enough. Although total sales rose from £7,383 per year in 1870 to £30,890 by 1879, the average net profit was as little as £372 a year. The years 1873 and 1876, when the company suffered losses, were particularly bad. No wonder that by the mid-1870s, Rowntree still saw himself as a Master Grocer first and cocoa manufacturer second.
As a plain Quaker, Joseph Rowntree appreciated thrift and frugality. Such parsimony without a clear vision might have driven the business into the ground, were it not for a curious visit that came out of the blue. In 1879 a French confectioner named Claude Gaget arrived in town and asked to see Rowntree. Gaget had worked for a French sweet firm, Campagnie Francaise of Paris, and adapted their recipes. He had created his own version of a new kind of sweet—a fruity, chewy pastille—that was popular in France but was not yet being made in England.
It is hard to imagine the middle-aged Joseph Rowntree, a Quaker who had proved most particularly set in his ways, with this eager young Frenchman tasting the pastilles. Perhaps it was the influence of Joseph’s younger brother, Henry, that gave the Frenchman such a favorable reception. But as Joseph ruminated on this small, colorful fruity sweet, which was unlike anything he had tasted, curling his tongue appreciatively around the slowly released flavors, he caught a glimpse of deliverance. Here was a creation that might enable him to get one up on the French and his Quaker rivals.
Joseph was not a man to leap into anything suddenly. With a careful eye on the budget, he supported the development of the fruit pastille in a sober and responsible manner. Investment in a boiling pot was much cheaper than investment in Van Houten’s machinery. There was room for a boiling pot or two in a corner of the factory, and money could be found for Gaget to hire an assistant. Joseph knew the French had a monopoly on pastilles and gums. If Gaget succeeded in creating a recipe that allowed him to mass-produce an expensive French speciality, he could launch a quality product at a low price. The new treat was honest and natural; just fruit and sugar. His faith in the fruity confection was boundless.
Yet after laboring over steaming cauldrons of fruit, Gaget delivered samples in 1880 that did not live up to their early promise. The texture was not right. The flavor was less than perfect. Joseph spurned sample after sample. The quest for an original breakthrough product remained as elusive as ever.
BOURNVILLE, BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND
Meanwhile at Bournville, George and Richard found themselves in the fast lane. “Orders after a time came in so fast,” observed chocolate maker Fanny Price, that the spacious new factory “at length became overcrowded.” Any misgivings that the decision to remove adulterated lines might seriously harm sales were soon put to rest. The message that Cadbury stood for quality and produced pure cocoa in wholesome conditions distinguished the brand from the rest of the market and boosted sales. The brothers advertised for staff in the local villages of Kings Norton, Stirchley, Northfield, and Selly Oak. The number of employees jumped from 230 when they left Bridge Street to more than 300 within a year.
A comparison of Fry’s and Cadbury’s sales figures during this period show just how wrong the critics were about Bournville. In 1875, Fry’s total sales were £236,075, while Cadbury’s were much smaller at £70,396, and Rowntree’s smaller still at £19,177. Five years later in 1880, Francis Fry saw his business grow to sales of £266,285. What he could not know was how fast Cadbury was catching up. That same year, Cadbury had sales figures of £117,505 and Rowntree of £44,017. In the twenty years since George and Richard had taken over from their father in 1861, they had turned a loss-making firm into one that was nearly half the size of their leading competitor.
The Cadbury brothers proved to be an unstoppable force. Richard’s oldest son, Barrow, was impressed by the collaboration between them: “No two partners ever worked in more complete harmony than the two Cadbury brothers, Richard and George,” he remarked. Material reward had not meant that the brothers abandoned their dedication to long hours and spartan self-denial. According to family records, it had long been their custom to make a small leg of mutton last for an entire week of meals: roast on Monday, minced by Wednesday, and “using the bones and any scrap end to furnish the meal on Friday.” When their father, John, came to visit one day at Bournville, the mutton bones were bare. He delivered a gentle rebuke, pointing out that it was not acceptable fare for the young clerk who dined with them, thus ending not only “the tyranny of the leg of mutton” but also the tyranny of extreme frugality.
Four years after the move, a reporter from the Midland Echo made the trip out to see what the brothers had created. “In the midst of green fields, with the ripple of the brook-like Bourne on whose banks the kingfisher and the moor hen find a home, Bournville forms the central part of a natural picture as refreshing to the senses as is the cup of cocoa manufactured there,” he enthused. The reporter was impressed with the creepers and shrubs “evidently glorying in the pure air” and the “well dressed happy looking girls trooping in at the door.” He noted that each girl looks “neat and clean, as if they were out visiting, and great is their admiration for their employers.” As for the Cadbury brothers themselves, “There is so little suggestive of the factory owner about them and so many implications of benevolence and kindly feeling that one becomes irresistibly impressed with the thought that money for themselves is the last thing on their minds!”
But business growth was indeed on their minds. News of the Swiss breakthroughs was starting to reach England, prompting George and Richard to create a research department to develop new lines. To take on the French, they hired a Parisian chocolatier, Frederick Kinchelman, known to the staff as “Frederick the Frenchman,” to refine such delicacies as Nougat Dragées, Pâte Duchesse, and Avelines for the Fancy Box. They decided to open a shop in Paris, turning a blind eye to the expensive and exclusive address at 90 Faubourg Saint-Honoré that was far removed from their simple Quaker beginnings.
Richard and George began to think about expanding into the far-flung towns in the British Empire. The very first traveller to venture overseas was Simeon Hall, who had visited Dublin in 1873. Now, following Fry’s lead, they worked through firms of exporters to set up sales further afield. In Canada, Edward Lusher, a local agent
in Montreal, was hired to promote their goods. This was followed by a similar deal in Chile with Brace Laidlow & Co. A small sample of goods was selected to dispatch to Chile, the labels duly translated into Spanish. In early 1881, the brothers took their foreign ambitions a step further. The Frys were not yet in Australia, presenting them with an opportunity to break new ground. Instead of hiring local agents, they sent out one of their own staff. A solitary traveller, Thomas Elford Edwards, was dispatched to cover the whole of Australia and New Zealand. He was the firm’s first permanent overseas representative. His mission: to find out whether the Australians had any interest in chocolate. In July 1881, a letter arrived at Bournville bearing an Australian stamp. It was from Edwards’s office in Melbourne and gave details of his first order. For the brothers it was a triumph. The first tentative threads of a chocolate empire reaching to the other side of the world.
Before there was any clear understanding of “globalization,” they recognized that their “new and handsome factory” stood at the threshold of something big. They wrote of an “extraordinary food revolution” that would transform Western lives where manufacturing would bring “internationality in food.” For a family that just a few generations earlier had exemplified Napoleon’s “nation of shop keepers,” the Cadbury brothers stood at the brink of a much larger enterprise. “There is certainly untold pleasure in having to contend with overwhelming difficulties,” wrote George. “And I sometimes pity those who have never had to go through it. Success is infinitely sweeter after struggle.”
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