Chocolate Wars: From Cadbury to Kraft: 200 years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalry

by Deborah Cadbury (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.25

  The delicious true story of the early chocolate pioneers by the award-winning writer, and direct descendant of the famous chocolate dynasty, Deborah Cadbury In 'Chocolate Wars' bestselling historian and award-winning documentary maker Deborah Cadbury takes a journey into her own family history to uncover the rivalries that have driven 250 years of chocolate empire-building. Beginning with an account of John Cadbury, who founded the first Cadbury's coffee and chocolate shop in Birmingham in 1824, 'Chocolate Wars' goes on to chart the astonishing transformation of the company's fortunes under his grandson George. But while the Cadbury dynasty is the fulcrum of the narrative, this is also the story of their Quaker rivals, the Frys and Rowntrees, and their European competitors, the Nestles, Suchards and Lindts. These rivalries drove the formation of the huge chocolate conglomorates that still straddle the corporate world today, and have first call on our collective sweet tooth. This is narrative history at its most absorbing, peopled by wonderfully colourful characters - the true story of the chocolate pioneers, the visions and ideals that inspired them and the mouth-watering concoctions they created.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2010

  $3.25

  The delicious true story of the world's most famous chocolate firms by award-winning writer and a descendant of the Cadbury chocolate dynasty, Deborah Cadbury In 'Chocolate Wars' bestselling historian and award-winning documentary maker Deborah Cadbury takes a journey into her own family history to uncover the rivalries that have driven 250 years of chocolate empire-building. In the early nineteenth century Richard Tapper Cadbury sent his son, John, to London to study a new and exotic commodity: cocoa. Within a generation, John's sons, Richard and George, had created a chocolate company to rival the great English firms of Fry and Rowntree, and their European competitors Lindt and Nestle. The major English firms were all Quaker family enterprises, and their business aims were infused with religious idealism. In America, Milton Hershey and Forrest Mars proved that they had the appetite for business on a huge scale, and successfully resisted the English companies' attempts to master the American market. As chocolate companies raced to compete around the globe, Quaker capitalism met a challenge that would eventually defeat it. At the turn of the millennium Cadbury, the sole independent survivor of England's chocolate dynasties, became the world's largest confectionary company. But before long it too faced a threat to its very survival, and the chocolate wars culminated in a multi-billion pound showdown pitting independence and Quaker tradition against the cut-throat tactics of a corporate leviathan. Featuring a colourful cast of savvy entrepreneurs, brilliant eccentrics and resourceful visionaries, 'Chocolate Wars' is the story of a uniquely alluring product and of the evolution, for better and worse, of modern business.