Cadbury’s Development

John Cadbury set up as a sole trader, selling groceries at 93 Bull Street, Birmingham in 1824. In 1831 he changed his business and rented a small factory in Crooked Lane to start the manufacture of cocoa and drinking chocolate. In those days cocoa and chocolate was a luxury, and affordable only by the wealthy. He thought that drinking chocolate was an alternative to alcohol, because he felt alcohol was the cause of poverty and social ills. This was the start of the Cadbury manufacturing business as it is known today.
In 1847, John created a partnership with his brother Benjamin Cadbury, and they rented a slightly larger factory in Bridge Street. Benjamin and John dissolved their partnership in 1860, and John retired in 1861, leaving his sons Richard and George to run the family business. The two brothers went to Holland and brought back a Van Houten press. This helped them to make a new kind of cocoa. This new cocoa was called Cadbury’s Cocoa Essence, which became very popular in England. The press also extracted more of the cocoa than the previous press.
In 1879, they relocated to Bournbrook, which they developed and renamed Bournville. This was unusual as most factories were in the cities, but this was in the country. It was known as ‘the factory in a garden’. Bournville is now a major suburb of Birmingham. The famous Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate was first made in 1905. This was the breakthrough of Cadbury’s, it was very popular and now they could produce more products related to the Dairy Milk. Also Cadbury’s could now start to compete with the Swiss chocolate companies. In 1919, Cadbury’s formed a merger with J.

S Fry & Sons, and this saw the integration of Fry’s Chocolate cream and Turkish Delight which are still sold today. In 1969 the Cadbury Group merged with Schweppes. Cadbury Schweppes Plc is a leader in confectionery and soft drinks both in the UK and overseas. With factories all over the world and a host of well known brand names it has become a household name in many countries. Contributing Factors Cadbury’s is a very successful company because of a number of reasons. Firstly, in 1866, when it was only a small business, The Cadbury brothers invested in new technology, in the form of the ‘Van Houten’ press.
They brought this back to England and this enabled Cadbury’s to make more eatable cocoa from the cocoa beans, so they could make better quality chocolate. Cadbury’s new cocoa essence was widely advertised, and it was the marketing of the new product that helped to turn the small business into the vastly known company it is today. The location of the factory was important too. It was situated on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, so the cocoa bean could come directly from Bristol docks.
To the east of the factory was the Birmingham wets suburban railway. On the southern edge was a country lane, which could be easily improved for road transport. There was a good water supply and plenty of room for expansion, so that the Cadburys brothers could fulfil their vision. Another major contributing factor was George’s ideas about how to treat the workforce. George Cadbury was the founder of the Bournville Trust. This was a community surrounding the Bournville factory, in which employees and non-employees lived in.
It had many facilities, such as medical and dental departments and even a pension scheme was launched with a capital gift from the company. He made sure that the workforces were treated well, so they would be motivated to work. Small rewards were given for punctuality and Cadbury was the first business to form the Saturday half-day holiday. The factory had extensive sports fields too. Sports facilities included cricket, football, hockey, tennis, squash courts and a bowling green. George also had ideas about quality of chocolate and how to package it so that it would be well recognised be customers.
He invented the Dairy Milk packaging, the famous two glasses of milk pouring out to form a bar of chocolate, which meant that in the chocolate bars there was a glass and a half of full cream in every half pound of chocolate. There were more types of chocolate being produced, in 1915 there was the introduction of the Cadbury’s milk tray, an assortment of flavours and shapes – made with Cadbury’s dairy milk. This product is still selling as well as it did then. Finally, there is the advertising that Cadbury’s have done on television. They have advertised on ITV’s Coronation Street since 1999.
Coronation Street is on of the most watched programmes on television, so this was a very good way for Cadburys of getting a good foothold in the advertising industry. The actual advertisements were a ‘chocolate Coronation Street’, with all the animated characters with a chocolate appearance, that was unique compared to all the other adverts at that time. Another question I asked was, “What is your favourite chocolate bar, that is not Cadbury’s”. Out of the 50 questionnaires, the most popular non-Cadburys chocolate bar was ‘Minstrels’ with 12 people putting it as their favourite.
Next most popular was ‘Galaxy Milk’ with 7 ticks, then ‘Mars’, ‘Smarties’ and ‘other’ all had 5 ticks. Twix was next most popular with 4 ticks. ‘Snicker’, ‘Maltesers’ and ‘Kit Kat’ all had 3 ticks, then, finally revels was least popular with only 1 person liking them the most. I discounted 2 questionnaires from the results because the results they showed were invalid, because on each one the person ticked more than 1 box. The graph below represents the results explained above. The next question I asked was, “What is your favourite Cadburys chocolate”.
The most popular Cadburys product was, the Cadburys ‘Cri?? me Egg’, as it had 17 ticks from the 50 people asked. Next most popular was the ‘Crunchie’ bar with 11 ticks and closely after this was the famous ‘Dairy Milk’ with 9 people ticking it as their favourite. 5 people put they liked ‘other’ Cadburys products, then with 3 ticks each was ‘Bournville’ and ‘Picnic’. Ultimately, the joint least popular Cadburys products were the ‘Double Decker’ and ‘Dairy Milk Nut’. These results are shown in the graph below The sixth question asked was, “Should Cadburys invest in new areas in confectionary?
” Of the 50 people asked, 46 said they would like to see Cadburys invest in new areas in confectionary, and only 6 said they would not like Cadburys to do this. This graph shows these results. The final question is linked to the previous question, and I will only analyse the 44 people that said ‘Cadburys should invest in new areas in confectionary’. The most common answer was that Cadburys should invest in producing ‘more chocolates’, as this answer had 19 ticks out of the 44 people asked. 10 people said they thought Cadburys should invest in fair trade chocolates and 9 thought they should invest in healthy areas of food.
There were 6 that though of other things Cadburys could invest in. examples of In appendix 2 you will see the latest business to be bought by Cadburys, Green ; Blacks. They also make chocolate, but it is organically made and is much more expensive than Cadburys bars and is more of a delicacy. The graph for the above results is shown here The 5th question I asked in my questionnaires was, “On average, how many Cadburys products do you consume during 1week? ” After analysing the questionnaires I have found out that 20/50 people asked said they consumed 1 Cadburys product per week.
Also 20/50 people put that they consumed 2-5 Cadburys products every week, and 10 out of the 50 asked put they consumed at least 5 Cadburys products per week. The graph below explains these results. Important Stakeholders A stakeholder is someone that would take an interest in a business. There can be many internal and external stakeholders. For instance internal stakeholders would be employees, shareholders and the directors. External stakeholders would be the customers, suppliers and the local community surrounding the business.