Yes that's right Bristol has a very close connection to the huge rise in chocolate eggs being a big part of Easter in the UK.
So while you are tucking into some tasty sweets, enjoy some knowledge too with these Eggstra-special Bristol Choccy Facts.
Quakers
Bristol’s history in chocolate is mainly (though not exclusively) connected to the paternalistic and very Quaker Fry family.
The firm of J.S. Fry & Sons was a major local employer first in Bristol, and later at Somerdale in Keynsham.
How paternalistic and Quaker? Joseph Storrs Fry II (1826-1913) would gather all the staff together before nine each morning for a Bible reading, a hymn and prayers.
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Family disgrace
… But not as Quaker as their Midlands rivals the Cadburys. George Cadbury’s son Egbert could not find a job with the family firm, but was taken on at Fry instead.
Apparently the Cadburys refused to employ him at Bourneville because of their pacifist beliefs; Egbert had disgraced the family by shooting down two Zeppelins in WW1.
Turncoat
And perhaps not as Quaker as Rowntree’s of York, either.
When Fry’s launched their Crunchie bar in 1929 it was a huge success. The way of making that crunchy, sugary toffee-ey centre was a complicated secret, but in 1935 the management of Rowntree’s received a package promising to reveal the secret in return for £5,000 (think of that as millions nowadays).
The Rowntrees folk were shocked by this treachery and immediately ratted out the sender to Fry’s back in Bristol.
The Fry family legacy
Other famous Fry brands: Fry’s Chocolate Cream; Five Boys Chocolate; Fry’s Turkish Delight; Tiffin (anyone remember Tiffin bars?) The Chocolate Cream is one of the oldest chocolate bars in the world, having been launched in 1866.
A strict factory
Rules in the Union Street factory included the prohibition of “profane oaths” and “improper expressions” and “Do not bring into the place the news or gossip you may have heard out of doors” and “a person who takes food in a disagreeable or noisy way is never a nice companion.”
Milking it for all it's worth
One reason why Fry’s lost out in the race to develop a commercially successful milk chocolate before its rivals was the difficulty in bringing thousands of gallons of fresh milk into central Bristol each day. The firm went with dried milk instead, and the chocolate wasn’t as good.
Tragedy
Fry’s won a marketing coup when it was chosen as sole supplier of cocoa to Robert F. Scott’s ill-fated 1910-12 Polar expedition. When Scott’s supply hut was uncovered from the ice in the 1950s, cases of Fry’s cocoa were found and returned to Bristol.
Some are still in the Antarctic to this day.
True people's vote
When the new factory at Keynsham was being built in the 1920s, Fry’s ran a competition offering £500 to come up with a name for the site.
There followed a massive 173,000 entries of which no less than 120 suggested ‘Somerdale’! All 120 people got a fiver each.
It would later be taken over by Cadbury's.
Ammonia advert
Fry’s most famous advert was for its Five Boys Chocolate, based on a photo taken in 1886. It featured Lindsay Poulton, the son of the photographer, pulling five different faces headed “Desperation, Pacification, Expectation, Acclamation, Realization it’s Fry’s”.
The first image, ‘Desperation’ was achieved when Lindsay’s father soaked a cloth in ammonia and wrapped it round the boy’s neck to make him cry.
Lindsay himself related this story to Fry’s employees when he was given a tour of the factory while in his eighties.
