Chocolate bar invention by Fry & Sons

Chocolate was primarily served as a drink or an ingredient in recipes until 1847.

Back in 1830, British candy makers J.S Fry and Sons developed the world’s first chocolate bar by roasting fermented cacao pods and then grinding them into a fine paste that could be separated into either cacao solids or cocoa butter.

J. S. Fry & Sons Limited was owned by Joseph Storrs Fry and his family. The company experimented with the ‘Dutched’ chocolate adding sugar and some of the cocoa butter and molding the mixture. They produced and commercialized the first plain chocolate bar in 1847 meant for eating as a snack.

Fry & Sons advertised it as ‘Chocolat Delicieux a manger’ (or Chocolate delicious to eat). In 1861 Richard Cadbury creates the first know heart-shaped chocolate box for Valentine’s Day.

The company later merged with Cadbury to form Fry Cadbury in 1919.
Chocolate bar invention by Fry & Sons

Hershey Chocolate Company

In 1893 Milton S. Hershey (1857-1945) visited Columbian Exposition in Chicago. There he saw a complete German chocolate manufacturing operation in action. He decided he wanted to make chocolate himself.

In 1894 he incorporated his new business as the Hershey Chocolate Company. Milton S. Hershey hired two chocolate makers and began manufacturing chocolates.

Milton S. Hershey built a chocolate factory and completed in 1905. The completion of the factory meant the mass production of chocolate could begin.

Chocolate making became such a huge part of Derry Church that the town was renamed Hershey.

Many of the Hershey’s major products date back to these early years. Hershey’s Kisses were first manufactured in 1907.

In the early 1920s, business boomed in Hershey, the factory turned out million of dollar worth of chocolate every year.

During the World War II, special Hershey chocolate bars were given to the US armed forces as part of Ration D. It weight four ounces and could with stand extreme heat. During the war, the company manufactured more than 3 billion bars.

Hershey Chocolate Company is the world’s largest producer of chocolate and cocoa products. The company was renamed the Hershey Chocolate Corporation and listed on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time.

Today the company has an annual revenue (2011) of $6.1 billion, exports its product to more than 90 countries and has operation in Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Virginia, Canada and other locations outside the US. Revenue for 2012 expected to be 6.6 billion.
Hershey Chocolate Company