The Life of Richard Cadbury

Book excerpt: The biography of Richard Cadbury, a son of one of the chocolate industry’s founding families, who helped grow the business during the Victorian era. In 1824, John Cadbury opened a grocer’s shop in Bull Street in Birmingham and started to sell tea, coffee, and drinking chocolate alongside everything else. In 1831, he opened a factory and started to manufacture his own product, and by 1842 the company was selling almost thirty different types of drinking chocolate and cocoa. In 1861, the now floundering firm was taken over by two of his sons, Richard and George, who turned things around and continued to grow the company into the organization known around the world today. The Life of Richard Cadbury is a brand-new biography that focuses on the lesser known of the brothers, looking at the history and background behind the socialist, philanthropist, and chocolatier.