Appears in
Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

By Darra Goldstein

Published 2015

  • About

Cadbury is the trademark representing the large manufacturers who dominated chocolate production in the twentieth century in the United Kingdom and a range of countries formerly part of the British Empire. In 1824 a Birmingham-based Quaker, John Cadbury, opened a shop selling tea, coffee, and “Cocoa Nibs, prepared by himself, an article affording a most nutritious beverage for breakfast,” as he proclaimed in his first advertisement. Cadbury would have remained an obscure retailer had he not seen the potential for expansion afforded by the government slashing the then-crippling import duties on cacao beans, an opportunity he seized in 1831 when he switched to manufacturing and opened his first factory.