Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers (9 page)

In addition to the commercial activity in London, there were regional centers of chocolate production, notably at York. As an apprentice, George Cadbury had witnessed the daring and confidence of Henry Rowntree on his entry into the world of the chocolatier. In 1860 Henry went to work in the cocoa and chicory business of the Tuke family, Quakers who were friends with the Rowntrees. Samuel Tuke had run the business, but after his death, his sons were not interested in taking charge of the family concern. Within two years, Henry was able to buy out the cocoa division of Tuke & Company. Henry could see that the Tuke premises, situated in the narrow, winding Castlegate in the heart of the old city of York, were too cramped and he set out to expand his cocoa works.

In buccaneer spirit he bought for £1000 what he called a “wonderful new machine” for grinding beans. Included in the sale were a motley collection of old buildings, which he optimistically described as his chocolate factory—an ironworks, a tavern, and several cottages in various stages of disrepair at Tanner’s Moat—the whole enterprise practically falling into the putrid-smelling River Ouse. Henry explored the larger premises with enthusiasm, smelling only chocolate as he glimpsed the river’s black and treacherous water.

The company’s leading brand had been Tuke’s Superior Rock Cocoa, which Henry duly relabelled Rowntree’s Prize Medal Rock Cocoa after it won a prize at a local fair. To keep customers loyal, Henry extolled the virtues of his Rowntree’s Rock Cocoa compared to rival brands. He evidently had a sense of humor and would raise a smile with a quip from Deuteronomy, no doubt appreciated by listeners who
knew their Bible: “For their Rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.” As he embarked on transforming Tanner’s Moat works into a modern factory that could churn out Rowntree’s Rock Cocoa to sell across England, Henry could smell the future. He had the support of his older brother, Joseph, who was running the Rowntree’s grocery shop in the center of York. George Cadbury knew that the Rowntrees had the determination to succeed.

There were other firms in York poised to benefit from the arrival of the railway. By the middle of the nineteenth century, some twelve trains a day leaving London could deliver 250,000 visitors to York over the year. Joseph Terry and his brothers, who had inherited their father’s confectionery business in 1854, took advantage of the new opportunities. Starting back in 1767, their forebears had sold boiled sweets and candied peel to the rich. Over the generations, the Terrys established a reputation for a range of sugar-based confections sold in their enticing sweet shop not far from Rowntree’s grocery shop. Just to open the shop door invited the unwary customer into a magical Hansel and Gretel world of sugared strawberries, raspberries, lemons, and oranges.

With the arrival of the railways, Joseph Terry was soon selling to customers in more than seventy-five towns across the Midlands and the north of England. To meet rising demand, he moved his manufacturing in 1862 to a larger site just outside the city walls. Here the twice-weekly steam packet brought exotic fruits and cocoa. In the 1860s, Joseph Terry was looking closely at how to diversify his range of sweetmeats to make more use of cocoa in chocolate-covered nuts and sweets.

But the Cadburys—and the other chocolate manufacturers—faced their stiffest competition in a giant Quaker concern in Bristol: Fry and Sons. The Frys ran the largest cocoa works in the world, so large that it was fast shaping the city of Bristol. Their factory was the size of a small town, and their sprawling works easily accommodated the varied processes of production. This was cocoa making for England. The Cadburys’ little plant could not compete.

George Cadbury was intrigued. “I never looked at the small people or the people who had failed,” he declared. “I wanted to know how
men succeeded, and it was their methods I examined, and if I thought them good, applied.” Through the Quaker network, George was able to approach the Frys in Bristol and found a partner, Francis James Fry, who was prepared to take him under his wing. Francis Fry and George Cadbury formed a loose alliance of English cocoa makers, which met for convenience in the London offices of the Taylor brothers. “I suppose we had some energy,” George recalled years later. “For Francis James Fry elected to go round with me to see the Cocoa and Chocolate Manufacturers.” George was surprised, remarking, “I was a young man in a small business compared to his.” A year older than George, Francis James was the fourth generation in his family’s firm. With Fry’s sales approaching a colossal £100,000 a year, Francis was secure in the knowledge that the young Cadbury brothers were no threat.

George Cadbury had everything to learn about the development of a family firm from his Fry counterpart—and learn he did. The Bristol firm, he noted, from the earliest years had an outstanding reputation for innovation.

T
he 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 experimented 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.