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ready to start designing the artwork for the packaging. At last, in the weeks before Christmas 1866, Cocoa Essence was launched.

      It soon became apparent that there was a problem. Unlike the cocoa of their competitors, which went further because of the addition of cheap ingredients such as starch and flour, the pure Cocoa Essence was by far the most expensive cocoa drink on the market. The launch faltered. Customers were scarce. The strain on the brothers was beginning to exact a toll. ‘It was an extremely hard struggle,’ George admitted. ‘We had ourselves to induce shopkeepers to stock our cocoa and induce the public to ask for it.’ It looked as though the gamble had failed.

      To the Frys, watching from Bristol, the Cadbury brothers’ move hinted at desperation. Under the management of Francis Fry, the company’s sales reached a staggering £102,747 in 1867. He continued to invest, expanding the premises in Union Street, and following the contract with the navy, Fry’s workforce rose to two hundred.

      In 1867, George and Richard made one last effort, exploiting something that other Quaker rivals spurned on principle: advertising. Plain Quakers like the Rowntrees in York believed that a business should be built on the quality and value of its goods. Nothing else should be needed if the product itself was honest. Advertising one’s goods was like advertising oneself: abhorrent to a man of God. To Joseph Rowntree, proudly established as ‘Master Grocer’ in his shop in York, advertising seemed slightly shabby and unworthy, elevating promotion above the quality of the product. Even though he could see that his younger brother Henry’s cocoa works at Tanners Moat was not taking off as hoped, he did not consider advertising to be the answer. He dismissed it as mere ‘puffery’; he even objected to fancy packaging, and was content to alert his customers to any new product with a restrained and dignified letter. His deeply religious sensibility was offended by the idea of extravagant claims or exaggeration of any kind.

      The Frys too had Quaker sensibilities when it came to excessive promotion. With the confidence that comes with over 150 years as a successful family business, Francis Fry saw little need for change. ‘Our early advertisements had a certain coy primness about them,’ conceded Fry’s management in the company’s 1928 Bicentennial Issue. The ‘venerable announcements’ of their original drink in the eighteenth century, Churchman’s Chocolate, consisted of long-winded essays trying to explain why this product was unique and how to obtain it – by Penny Post or from ‘the hands of errand boys’. This had progressed by the early nineteenth century to little homilies that advised the public how to prepare the drink and why it was good for them. But the language remained old-fashioned, describing the firm as an ‘apothecary’. ‘We were full of innocent pride in that period,’ wrote the management. Certainly these notices had nothing in them that would stop readers in their tracks. No gorgeous girl of forthright demeanour with glossy lips and an unmistakeable message in her eye as she drank her cocoa: just a message, hardly readable in small typeface, telling of Churchman’s Chocolate.

      To the Cadbury brothers it seemed that advertising could do more. Another company, Pears, was taking advertising to new levels at this time. In 1862 Thomas Barratt, often described as the father of modern advertising, had married into the Pears family, and saw a way of turning a little-known quality product, Pears soap, into a household name by replacing the traditional understatement with a simple, attention-grabbing message. He began by enlisting the help of eminent medical men such as Sir Erasmus Wilson, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and members of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. At a time when some soap products actually contained harmful ingredients such as arsenic, the medical men were happy to endorse Pears because it was ‘without any of the objectionable qualities of the old soaps’. Barratt created posters and packaging adorned with eye-catching images of healthy children and beautiful women, with the brand name featuring boldly. For the consumer the message was immediate and simple: use this soap and you will be beautiful.

      To the Frys, the modern style of poster, with its pithy message, was not unlike ‘a sudden assault’ on the eyes. ‘You get the great news at once,’ declared Fry company literature. ‘You feel that something has struck you and you have, of course, been struck, not by somebody’s fist or stick, but by an idea.’ For many Quaker firms this ‘assault’ on the unsuspecting customer raised ethical concerns, but desperation drove the Cadbury brothers to a different view.

      George and Richard knew they had to change the public perception of their pure new drink. Shrugging off their Quaker scruples, they took a gamble and committed to a further investment. Like the Pears team, they asked their salesmen to visit doctors in London with samples of their new product. To the delight of the brothers, this won the support of the obliging medical press. ‘Cocoa treated thus will, we expect, prove to be one of the most nutritious, digestible and restorative of drinks,’ enthused the British Medical Journal. Noting the brothers’ claim that their product was three times the strength of ordinary cocoas and free from ‘excess fatty matter’, the Lancet concurred: ‘Essence of Cocoa is just what it is declared to be by Messrs Cadbury brothers.’

      The Cadburys’ timing was excellent, because during the 1860s the purity of manufactured foods was a growing concern for the public. There was very little regulation of the food market, and even staples like bread could be contaminated. The public had first been warned in 1820, when the chemist Frederick Accum published A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons, which argued that processed food could be dangerous. By the 1850s, Dr Arthur Hassall had written a series of reports in the Lancet exposing some of the commonly used additives in cocoa production: brick dust, red lead and iron compounds to add colour; animals fats or starches such as corn, tapioca or potato flour to add bulk. By 1860, in response to public pressure, the government introduced the first regulations to prevent the adulteration of food.

      Yet still the practice continued. In one government investigation more than half the cocoa samples tested were found to be contaminated with red ochre from brick dust. Consumer guides appeared, telling customers how to test their cocoa and warning that a slimy texture and a cheesy or rancid taste indicated the presence of animal fat. If the cocoa thickened in hot water or milk this was evidence that starches had been added, something you could confirm if your comfort drink turned blue in the presence of iodine. Most worrying of all was the continued use of contaminants, including poisons such as red lead, which were injurious to human health but which enhanced the product’s colour or texture. It was small wonder then that the Grocer hurried to follow the lead of the medical press and sang the praises of the Cadbury brothers’ pure new product: ‘There will be thousands of shop keepers who will be glad of an opportunity to retail cocoa guaranteed to contain nothing but the natural constituents of the bean.’

      With this support, in 1867 the Cadburys planned the largest advertising campaign they had ever undertaken. There was no longer a question mark over advertising. They would use it with confidence, and really make the Cadbury name stand out. For the first time, they were effectively rebranding the whole image of cocoa. Their Cocoa Essence was honest, and they intended to shout it from the rooftops. Richard Cadbury came up with a slogan that capitalised on the strengths of their new product: ‘Absolutely Pure, Therefore Best’. They took out full-page advertisements in newspapers and put posters in shop fronts and even on London omnibuses. Soon the Cadbury name, synonymous with the purity of the company’s product, was everywhere. It was unavoidable, rippling around the capital like a refrain from a song. Given half a chance, the Cadbury brothers would have covered the dome of St Paul’s, protested one writer. But at the chocolate works, everyone caught the mood of excitement.

      By the autumn of 1868, with the campaign gaining momentum, the staff at Bridge Street grew to almost fifty. David Jones, a former railway goods porter who had longed to be a traveller, vividly recalled his first day: ‘George put a sample in my hand and told me to go wherever I wanted for a week, the only stipulation being that I should not trespass on the grounds of another traveller.’ He chose north Wales, but soon had reason to regret his decision. No one had tasted anything like Cocoa Essence before. ‘I gave hundreds of shop keepers a taste,’ he remembered, ‘only to watch their faces lose their customary shape as though they had taken vinegar or wood worm.’ But Jones

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