Chocolate Bar - History

History

Up to and including the 19th century, candy of all sorts was typically sold by weight, loose, in small pieces that would be bagged as bought. The introduction of chocolate as something that could be eaten as is, rather than used to make beverages or desserts, resulted in the earliest bar forms, or tablets. At some point, chocolates came to mean any chocolate-covered candies, whether nuts, creams (fondant), caramel candies, or others. The candy bar evolved from all of these in the late-19th century as a way of packaging and selling candy more conveniently, for both buyer and seller. This "convenience" did not include price, of course, as the buyer had to pay for the packaging. It was considerably cheaper to buy candy loose, or in bulk.

In 1847, the Fry's chocolate factory, located in Union Street, Bristol, England, molded the first ever chocolate bar suitable for widespread consumption. The firm began producing the Fry's Chocolate Cream bar in 1866. Over 220 products were introduced in the following decades, including production of the first chocolate Easter egg in UK in 1873 and the Fry's Turkish Delight (or Fry's Turkish bar) in 1914. In 1896 the firm became a registered private company. It was run by the Fry family, with Joseph Storrs Fry II, grandson of the first Joseph Storrs Fry, as the chairman.

Although chocolate bars and candy bars had their beginnings in the 19th century, it was in the early-20th century that this confectionery commercial venture grew most rapidly. The first wrapped chocolate bar, which is still being produced, was the Hershey bar, produced by The Hershey Company in 1900. A number of the bars developed in that era still exist in relatively unchanged form (except for miniature versions such as Hershey's Miniatures chocolate bars released in 1939). In the U.S., most candy bars started out priced at ten cents, down to five cents during the Great Depression, and back to ten after World War II. This price remained stable until the late 1960s.

During the first half of the 20th century in the U.S., there were thousands of different candy bars being manufactured and distributed locally or regionally by small candy companies. Some of these still survive, but a few major manufacturers have taken over the marketplace, buying up smaller companies and reproducing the most popular of their candy bars. Today candy bars are made and consumed all over the world, and manufactured to local tastes and environmental conditions.

Armenia held the record of producing the world's largest chocolate bar weighing in at 9,702 lbs.