Cadbury

Cadbury, formerly Cadbury's and Cadbury Schweppes, is a British multinational confectionery company owned by Mondelez International (spun off from Kraft Foods) since 2010. It is the second-largest confectionery brand in the world, after Mars. Cadbury is internationally headquartered in Greater London, and operates in more than 50 countries worldwide. It is known for its Dairy Milk chocolate, the Creme Egg and Roses selection box, and many other confectionery products. One of the best-known British brands, in 2013 The Daily Telegraph named Cadbury among Britain's most successful exports.

Cadbury was founded in 1824 in Birmingham, England, by John Cadbury (1801–1889), a Quaker who sold tea, coffee and drinking chocolate. Cadbury developed the business with his brother Benjamin, followed by his sons Richard and George. George developed the Bournville estate, a model village designed to give the company's workers improved living conditions. Dairy Milk chocolate, introduced by George Jr in 1905, used a higher proportion of milk in the recipe than rival products. By 1914, it was the company's best-selling product. Successive members of the Cadbury family have made innovations with chocolate products. Cadbury, Rowntree's and Fry's were the big three British confectionery manufacturers throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Cadbury was granted its first royal warrant from Queen Victoria in 1854. It held a royal warrant from Elizabeth II from 1955 to 2022. Cadbury merged with J. S. Fry & Sons in 1919, and Schweppes in 1969, known as Cadbury Schweppes until 2008, when the American beverage business was split as Dr Pepper Snapple Group; the rights ownership of the Schweppes brand had already differed between various countries since 2006. In 1992, Sir Adrian Cadbury, chairman of the company for 24 years, produced the Cadbury Report, a code of best practice which served as a basis for reform of corporate governance around the world. Cadbury was a constant constituent of the FTSE 100 on the London Stock Exchange from the index's 1984 inception until the company was bought by Kraft Foods Inc. in 2010.

On 4 March 1824, John Cadbury, a Quaker, began selling tea, coffee and drinking chocolate in Bull Street in Birmingham, England. From 1831, he moved into the production of a variety of cocoa and drinking chocolates, made in a factory in Bridge Street and sold mainly to the wealthy because of the high cost of production. In 1842, he started selling chocolate for eating, perhaps the first in Britain. In 1847, John Cadbury became a partner with his brother Benjamin and the company became known as "Cadbury Brothers". In 1847, Cadbury's competitor Fry's of Bristol produced the first chocolate bar (which would be mass-produced as Fry's Chocolate Cream in 1866). Cadbury introduced his brand of the chocolate bar in 1849, and that same year, Cadbury and Fry's chocolate bars were displayed publicly at a trade fair in Bingley Hall, Birmingham. The Cadbury brothers opened an office in London, and, in 1854, they received the royal warrant as manufacturers of chocolate and cocoa to Queen Victoria. The company went into decline in the late 1850s.

John Cadbury's sons Richard and George took over the business in 1861. At the time of the takeover, the business was in rapid decline: the number of employees had reduced from 20 to 11, and the company was losing money. By 1866, Cadbury was profitable again. The brothers had turned around the business by moving the focus from tea and coffee to chocolate, and by increasing the quality of their products.

The firm's first major breakthrough occurred in 1866, when Richard and George introduced an improved cocoa into Britain. A new cocoa press developed in the Netherlands removed some of the unpalatable cocoa butter from the cocoa bean. The firm began exporting its products in the 1850s. In 1861, the company created Fancy Boxes (a decorated box of chocolates) and, in 1868, they were sold in boxes in the shape of a heart for Valentine's Day. Boxes of filled chocolates quickly became associated with the holiday.

Cadbury manufactured their first Easter egg in 1875, creating the modern chocolate Easter egg after developing a pure cocoa butter that could be moulded into smooth shapes. By 1893, Cadbury had 19 different varieties of chocolate Easter egg on sale.

In 1878, the brothers decided to build new premises in countryside four miles (6.4 km) from Birmingham. The move to the countryside was unprecedented in business. Better transport access for milk that was shipped inward by canal, and cocoa that was brought in by rail from London, Southampton and Liverpool docks was taken into consideration. With the development of the Birmingham West Suburban Railway along the path of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, they acquired the Bournbrook estate, comprising 14.5 acres (5.9 ha) of countryside south of Birmingham. Located next to the Stirchley Street railway station, which itself was opposite the canal, they renamed the estate Bournville and opened the Bournville factory in 1879. In 1891, the Cadbury brothers filed a patent for a chocolate-coated biscuit.