hazelchaz | ...Been across the ocean to the south sea isles, yeah, I travelled to the east and west...

Part 3 of 4

Bournville is a company town. Cadbury has roots in Birmingham, but they decided to set up their factory out in the countryside. They picked a place by the Bourn Stream, hence the name, and where there was already a railway line, and called it Bournville. The old factory building has a great big sign that says BOURNVILLE on it. The factory complex has grown, so there's now another building in front of that building -- you can't see the sign from outside the factory complex. And I wasn't brave enough to try to shoot a photo of it, given the "no photography!" signs stationed throughout the factory tour.

The factory tour was, in my book, remarkable for how little of the factory they showed us. Oh, they had lots of dioramas and interactive exhibits and multimedia presentations about the history and production of Cadbury chocolate; but it would have been nice to follow the process and actually see where the tankers of chocolate come into the factory to where the finished chocolate bars are wrapped and boxed and palletized. We saw some of the packing robots and machinery and conveyor belts on the other side of plexiglas walls, and we could certainly smell the delicious chocolate when we went through the warm "tempering" part of the factory -- but there it was happening on the other side of an opaque wall. Most of the story was told through movies and exhibits.

They also focussed on the chocolate line, which is understandable of course, but I'm interested in the corporate history too. I mean, yes, I'm glad that they understood early on that a happy worker is a productive worker, and health plans mean less downtime and absenteeism, and so forth. But the sign outside says "Cadbury Trebor Bassett." And there's a building across from the main Cadbury Trebor Bassett building that says "Cadbury Schweppes." There's got to be a story there; with their acquisitions did they eventually expand to the point where it was logical to split off the solid products (chocolate, candy, etc) from the liquids (the tonic water, ginger ale, club soda, and other Schweppes mixers and products)? They only talked about buying out Fry's -- the cocoa company, not the american electronics & groceries people, of course. And that was a hundred years ago.

They also left out a whole chapter from WWII. They said, -"in the war years, chocolate was rationed. Cadbury make chocolate bars to send to the troops. Cadbury also contributed to the war efforts in other ways."- Okay, I think it would be interesting to find out what sort of strategic war materials a chocolate factory could produce. I understand shipping being curtailed and they couldn't get the beans from equatorial Africa when Rommel was running loose; but what did they do for Britain's part in the war? A big chapter missing, I think.

(Speaking of war efforts, did you know that sugar-free Jell-O was invented because of sugar rationing?)

The Cadbury World tour was a nice mini theme park exhibit. The theater where they explained the processing of the beans -- when they got to the park about shaking the beans, they shook us all back and forth; when they roasted the beans in the movie, they turned on the heat lamps; and so forth, it got to the point where every time they explained another part of the process I thought they'd be trying it on us, too. And they have a Dark Ride -- you get in the cart and go through a silly sequence of dioramas showing the chocolate beans at play, the caramel bunny lying indolently beneath a tree, more chocolate beans on safari and horsing around.

And, fans should know: there was a chocolate bean character wearing a propellor beanie. (Everyone out there know that fan artist Ray Faraday Nelson invented the propellor beanie? Good, good...)

Anyhow, that was just adorable. And the brief overview of Cadbury chocolate adverts on tv through the ages (well, the 50's through the 90's anyway) was interesting, because I'm interested in that sort of thing. They also showed the set for the chocolate people Coronation Street adverts, with claymation characters that were all chocolate colored. Apparently Cadbury is or was a sponsor of the popular long-running soap opera, and made commercials [excuse me, adverts] that tied into the show ever so slightly. By slightly, I mean there's a nameplate that says "Coronation Street" on the side of the one of the buildings in the set that they start each advert on, and there's a character with a moustache in some of them that's based on a real actor in the series.

Cadbury is a big player in Britain; M&M/Mars and Hershey and Nestlé are trying to get some market share, but it's Cadbury's playground. The Cadbury adverising camaign in America is very weak, especially by comparison. I'd never seen the "cup and half of milk" logo back home; the only thing that sticks in my mind are the Cadbury Creme Eggs they have at Easter. I think Cadbury has one particular superior product in the american market: the chocolate eggs with the candy shell. It's like, but not quite the same as, a peanut M&M that has more chocolate instead of the nut; but the candy shell is very different from the M&M candy shell. Cadbury ought to figure out a way to sell them the rest of the year.

And of course, at the end of the whole thing, they dump you out in the gift shop. "The biggest Cadbury shop in the world." They had some mini Bournville bars. The Bournville is a dark chocolate bar -- we haven't tried ours yet, but I expect it to be like a Hersheys Special Dark. I think it highly ironic that they named it Bournville; I understand about respect for the town they built, the history of the company, and so forth, but dark chocolate is such a small part of this place that processes zillions of tons of milk chocolate!

Now, that gift shop is run by the people who run the Cadbury World franchise, i.e. it's not directly a Cadbury operation, but there's also a factory employee shop that we got a ticket to make one shopping trip at. So we actually shopped at two Cadbury shops on the property. We also ate at the Cadbury diner (cafeteria);

library_lynn had a jacket potato with butter (she's been having a lot of those on this trip), and I had a Coke.

Did I mention that when you start the tour, they give you a plastic bag and a couple of Cadbury bars? And at some of the stops, they hand out some more? (Plus they give you samples in the chocolate tasting & demonstration room.) Someone had left behind their bag! They'd sampled some, probably enough to give the kids a start on their sugar buzz, and left the rest. If I was more cynical, I'd say a parent probably left the bag behind accidentally on purpose.

At one point I went in and used the Gents. I was surprised to see what in America would be an illegal faucet arrangement; the US building code doesn't allow separate hot and cold faucets. You can have hot and cold controls, but at home they have to feed into one spigot. The old configuration where to get lukewarm water you have to stop up the basin and run hot and cold water in the basin and mix them there -- we don't have that back home anymore.

We met a dance instructor and three of her dancing girls, aged 8-10. Lotty Cunningham was the designated adult, and was escorting Leah Jones, Jessica Mazumder, and Kira Preece. After the day working up a chocolate sugar high, they were due to go to a dance recital that evening. Jessica has plans to come to California in the next 12 months, so we might see her again.