Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers

In the early nineteenth century the major English chocolate firms—Fry, Rowntree, and Cadbury—were all Quaker family enterprises that aimed to do well by doing good. The English chocolatiers introduced the world's first chocolate bar and ever fancier chocolate temptations—while also writing groundbreaking papers on poverty, publishing authoritative studies of the Bible, and campaigning against human rights abuses. The ensuing chocolate wars would culminate in a multi-billion-dollar showdown pitting Quaker tradition against the cutthroat tactics of a corporate behemoth. Chocolate was always a global business, and in the global competitors, especially the Swiss and the Americans Hershey and Mars, the Quaker capitalists met their match. Featuring a cast of savvy entrepreneurs, brilliant eccentrics, and resourceful visionaries, Chocolate Wars is a delicious history of the fierce, 150-year business rivalry for one of the world's most coveted markets.

The path to success was not easy, and Cadbury tells the story of fierce competition from names like Fry, Nestlé, Hershey, and Mars, as well as the Dutch and Swiss entrepreneurs who were so crucial in cracking the food chemistry of the cacao bean. From Booklist A descendant of the Cadbury family of chocolatiers, author Cadbury is also an award-winning documentary producer for the BBC and has seven other books to her credit. Cadbury chronicles 150 years of chocolate wars that only heated up further into a global-merger competition, which saw the venerated Cadbury brand

Buddha Baby said How greed took over good intentions. This is Deborah Cadbury of THE Cadbury family.  She writes about Cadbury, Hershey, Nestle, and  other companies and the development of chocolate as a food product.  It begins with people wondering what to do with this bean to make money with it.  It includes information about developing these products, finding the cocoa beans, growing the beans in new locales around the world, marketing to different cultures i.e. convincing people they need it and on and on and is fascinating.  For me the most interesting part however, was about the business models used. &nb. the fascinating story of the Quaker families behind the great British confectionary brands David This is the fascinating story of the Quaker families behind the great British confectionary brands, Rowntree, Fry, and, of course, Cadbury, whose legacy is not just famous chocolate brands, but the model garden villages of Bournville and New Earswick, and an array of worthy charitable endeavours. The book also tells of the domestic and international marketplace battles with the Swiss and American giants, Nestle, Mars, Hershey etc., whose founding stories and colourful characters are also vividly described. It culminates with the story of the 2010 Kraft takeover of Cadbury, and raise. Sheilab said History and Nostalgia. I was a high school student in the 60's in the old campus of Camp Hill Grammar School in Birmingham and nostalgically remember the odor of hot chocolate wafting over us from Bournville as we sat in the playground during a lunch break. I organized a final year visit to the factory, when we traveled, in school uniform, to savor the delights of watching the process of chocolate-making (an experience that was unavailable for my own children during the late 70's and early 80's when hygiene regulations forbade the direct presence of outside visitors on the factory floor). After following