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Cadbury's Bournville Factory

Well it is not a British firm any more and has adulterated some of its products with vile Oreo, and tried to introduce obnoxious things such as jelly lumps ruining chocolate. They also don't now produce of the chocolate themselves, any more other than that labelled Dairy milk, though this does not really matter for many countlines, as it would be difficult to detect in many lines with other components. the quality of the Dairy milkk has, however also deteriorated, and the thinness of many of the bars that now exists because of "slimming down" makes the rating quality of the products less pleasant
 
It's a shame that the Cadbury family members sold their interest in the business. Were they conned into believing that the business would carry on as it was? Or were they just taking the money and running?

If you want to keep a business running as it was and doing what it was, you have to keep taking an interest in it; keep working with it. There are many businesses which are still functioning centuries down the line because the descendents of the original owners believed in their product and carried on doing what their ancestors had done. Many farms work on this basis and provide us with a good model of continuing business success.

Without business success, as a nation we are screwed!
 
TerryD147 said:
It's a shame that the Cadbury family members sold their interest in the business. Were they conned into believing that the business would carry on as it was? Or were they just taking the money and running?

If you want to keep a business running as it was and doing what it was, you have to keep taking an interest in it; keep working with it. There are many businesses which are still functioning centuries down the line because the descendents of the original owners believed in their product and carried on doing what their ancestors had done. Many farms work on this basis and provide us with a good model of continuing business success.

Without business success, as a nation we are screwed!
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I think that the Cadbury family started into too many non core businesses. I was recruited by them in the US when they were called Cadbury Schweppes. They had acquired Peter Paul, Almond Joy, Mott’s and a couple of other companies. It was a senior position reporting to the President. It was clear during the vetting process that they did not understand the scope of their competition, Mars, largest candy maker in the world still family managed and Hershey still with family roots and control. Regardless if one personally likes the product, we are now 35 years on and those companies are alive and well. Cadbury, the brand is great and valuable; as a highly regarded management consultant says, “it’s time to look in the mirror and time to look out the window”, the Cadbury family should go look in the mirror.
For me I declined the offer and specialized in turning struggling companies around and started my own company which I sold after 11 years and did a major turn around supplying body parts for BMW, MB, Honda & Toyota.
 
The problem was that when itcwas sold the family only had a limited financial interest in it. It had become ( for financial reasons I believe) a limited public company around 1950 though then the filyvsyill had control. After the merger with Schweppes they still had influence but had to please shareholders. They went through one battle successfully turning away the predator, but by the time kraft skid in the controlling executive was an American who ,S so often happens, was only interested in his own well being. He went " on holiday" to the US, and, ", purely by coincidence" a bid took place a few days later, though many/most of the board were opposed.
Richard you were right in saying that were not knowledgeable about businesses in the US, both on the chocolate and especially drinks side. I believe that the reason for the attempted expansion was due to those coming from the Schweppes side in the merger. The Schweppes side qere a financial manipulating type, outstanding for quick profits and financial finangling. They brought modern business practices to the firm, and cared little about people or long term stability and look what happened
 
Your spot on their Richard. I too recall Cadburys becoming Cadbury Schweppes and started acquiring other companies along the way. I was then thinking to myself who actually minding the shop. They pit themselves alongside some very experienced US businesses operating the Jack Welch businesses model of driving up shareholder prices and driving production down to cost not quality.
 
Morturn said:
Your spot on their Richard. I too recall Cadburys becoming Cadbury Schweppes and started acquiring other companies along the way. I was then thinking to myself who actually minding the shop. They pit themselves alongside some very experienced US businesses operating the Jack Welch businesses model of driving up shareholder prices and driving production down to cost not quality.
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Exactly! Unilevers approach to acquisitions has worked well for the most part and has picked off a number of US companies and integrated them under their umbrella. They have strong management team in place and have done very well growing the business profitably.
 
mikejee said:
The problem was that when itcwas sold the family only had a limited financial interest in it. It had become ( for financial reasons I believe) a limited public company around 1950 though then the filyvsyill had control. After the merger with Schweppes they still had influence but had to please shareholders. They went through one battle successfully turning away the predator, but by the time kraft skid in the controlling executive was an American who ,S so often happens, was only interested in his own well being. He went " on holiday" to the US, and, ", purely by coincidence" a bid took place a few days later, though many/most of the board were opposed.
Richard you were right in saying that were not knowledgeable about businesses in the US, both on the chocolate and especially drinks side. I believe that the reason for the attempted expansion was due to those coming from the Schweppes side in the merger. The Schweppes side qere a financial manipulating type, outstanding for quick profits and financial finangling. They brought modern business practices to the firm, and cared little about people or long term stability and look what happened
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Mike your comment regarding Schweppes is interesting. After the British Invasion of the US (and during), the Beatles etc, just about everything UK was a hit in the US. Schweppes was one of those. We have a lot of long hot summers in the US especially south of the Mason - Dixon for drinking VTs & GTs, the problem is Schweppes could not keep up with the demand! They did this over and over and the opened the door for a number of other brands, Schweppes set the standard and did not deliver. When Cadbury’s launched the cream eggs in the US our children who were born in’70 & ‘72 were crazy about them (still are), the problem is that Cadbury could not deliver over and over. Today the cream eggs are made with the Cadbury brand by Hershey, they haven’t run out, I am sure that my grandchildren or my wife would have told me.
I have been a part of ‘brand strategy’ not the driver but the person who has to make the parts/product, the implementer. Two things I have painfully learned, be ready on time and have enough capacity. Cadbury/Schweppes failed on both counts, the created a great product, a market for it then let someone else walk in.
Going back to the interview process in 1982, there were 5 sessions, 4 with people from the UK, they were proud, gracious but didn’t get the difference in market size and scope.
 
The loss of the royal warrant by Cadbury's should bring alarm bells ringing out to our politicians who allow the sale of British company products
The same could apply to HP sauce, made in Birmingham at Aston.
That sauce used local water and moving production abroad changed the product
It was a different product to that made originally in Nottingham for the same reason
As to the post office the Royal Mail title should also be lost
 
Heartland said:
The loss of the royal warrant by Cadbury's should bring alarm bells ringing out to our politicians who allow the sale of British company products
The same could apply to HP sauce, made in Birmingham at Aston.
That sauce used local water and moving production abroad changed the product
It was a different product to that made originally in Nottingham for the same reason
As to the post office the Royal Mail title should also be lost
Click to expand...
Actually, in a rather different direction, this happened with Cadburys. They moved their roasting of beans to Chirk in the late 1960s. Thye realised that this might affect the flavour of Bournville dark chocolate (Because of the way Dairy milk is/was made, it was unlikely to affect the flavour of the milk choc). They built up large stocks of Bournville chocolate to give them time to get the flavour as near as possible to the Birmingham made product. However, taste tests showed that customers preferred the optimised flavour of the Chirk product. In the opposite direction,, there were difference in the taste of Irish -made dairy milk to UK made. This was largely due to the equipment used to make the chocolate crumb that went into it. The Irish still used the batch oven process , similar to that used in UK previously. However the UK had introduced a "modern"continuous process, which did not give such an intense flavour, however much they tried. The Irish product (then mainly used for flake and some countlines, was, to my and many other tasters, much better.
 
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