Chocolate: From Bristol's First Bar to a Craft Boom

Chocolate began as a bitter, spiced drink brewed by Mesoamerican civilisations more than three and a half thousand years ago, long before it was ever moulded into a bar. The South West's own chapter in that story is a short but pivotal one: the world's first mass-produced eating chocolate was made in Bristol, and the region is now home to a small but genuine wave of independent chocolate makers working in its wake.

From a ceremonial drink to a European luxury

The earliest confirmed evidence of cacao use comes from pottery residues at Paso de la Amada on Mexico's Pacific coast and El Manatí on the Gulf Coast, dating to between 1900 and 1750 BC - among the Mokaya and pre-Olmec peoples, roughly seven centuries earlier than previously documented. By the Classic Maya period (around AD 250-900), cacao had become both a ceremonial drink and a form of currency: dried beans were collected as tribute by Maya rulers, and the Aztecs later measured larger sums in xiquipilli, cloth sacks holding 8,000 beans each. The drink itself, ground cacao mixed with water and spiced with chilli, went by the Nahuatl name xocoatl - the root of the modern word chocolate.

Spanish colonists encountered cacao in the early sixteenth century, initially valuing it more as currency than as something to eat or drink, before chocolate crossed to Europe and was reworked with sugar into a sweetened drink for the aristocracy. For roughly three hundred years, chocolate in Europe stayed a drink, not a solid food - the technical step that changed that happened in Bristol.

Bristol and the birth of the modern chocolate bar

Bristol

The city's chocolate history traces to 1728, when Walter Churchman patented a method for grinding cocoa beans there. Joseph Fry acquired the rights after Churchman's family gave up the business, and began trading under his own name from 1761. The company passed through several names - Fry, Vaughan & Co, then Anna Fry & Son after Joseph's death - before becoming J. S. Fry & Sons in 1822, by which point it was the largest commercial chocolate producer in Britain.

In 1847, Fry's chocolate factory moulded what is widely considered the first solid eating chocolate bar, Chocolat Délicieux à Manger, made by adding cocoa butter back into the pressed chocolate liquor rather than removing it entirely - a technique that made a mouldable, eatable bar possible for the first time. Fry's followed it with Fry's Chocolate Cream in 1866, generally regarded as the first mass-produced chocolate bar and still, under Cadbury ownership, the oldest continuously used chocolate brand name in the world. The UK's first chocolate Easter egg followed from the same factory in 1873.

Fry's merged with Cadbury in 1919, and from 1923 the Bristol operation relocated to a purpose-built garden factory at Somerdale in Keynsham, finally completed in 1935. At its peak Somerdale employed more than 5,000 people and ran its own power station and rail sidings; during the Second World War, spare floor space was given over to Rolls-Royce for Merlin engine production. Cadbury was taken over by Kraft Foods in 2010, and despite assurances during the takeover that the site would stay open, Somerdale closed on 31 March 2011, with production moved to a factory in Skarbimierz, Poland, and around 400 jobs lost.

What the evidence says about chocolate and health

Chocolate carries one narrow, specific health claim that is actually authorised for use in Great Britain, and it is easy to overstate what it covers. The GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register permits: "Cocoa flavanols help maintain the elasticity of blood vessels, which contributes to normal blood flow." The claim was substantiated by EFSA in 2012 and 2014 on proprietary data submitted by Barry Callebaut, and it applies strictly to cocoa beverages or dark chocolate providing at least 200mg of cocoa flavanols a day, or to high-flavanol cocoa extract in capsule form - not to chocolate in general.

That threshold matters, because most commercial chocolate does not come close to it. The British Heart Foundation and HEART UK both note that a large share of a cocoa bean's natural flavanol content is lost during standard manufacturing, and that the amount remaining is inconsistent even between bars with similar cocoa percentages. A 20g portion of dark chocolate typically provides somewhere between 22mg and 73mg of flavanols - well under the 200mg the authorised claim requires - and milk chocolate provides only a fraction of that, with white chocolate containing none.

Observational studies point to a more modest pattern: a 2019 review found chocolate consumption of around 45g a week associated with the lowest risk of cardiovascular disease, with the apparent benefit eroding at higher intakes as sugar and saturated fat outweigh any flavanol effect. Chocolate also contains theobromine, a caffeine-related stimulant under active research for blood pressure effects, though - as with flavanols - a typical portion is unlikely to contain enough to matter; it is the same compound that makes chocolate toxic to dogs and cats, which metabolise it far more slowly than humans do. The fat in dark chocolate's cocoa butter is a mixed picture too: it contains stearic acid, which has a broadly neutral effect on blood cholesterol, alongside palmitic acid, which does raise it.

None of this makes chocolate a health food. A standard 45g milk chocolate bar runs to around 240 calories and 25g of sugar - more than half of the NHS's recommended daily limit of free sugars for an adult - so both the BHF and HEART UK frame moderation, not any particular flavanol content, as the main practical guidance: a couple of squares of dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids or above) rather than a whole bar, eaten as an occasional treat.

Beyond eating it, cacao has uses that rarely reach a British kitchen. In its country of origin the pulp surrounding the beans - lychee-like and faintly tart - is eaten fresh, pressed into juice, or fermented into a spirit, while the cocoa butter pressed from the beans is a common ingredient in skincare and cosmetics for its emollient properties, entirely separate from its use in chocolate itself.

The craft boom - South West makers today

Devon · Cornwall

Chocolate on this scale is a different business from Fry's industrial-era Bristol. The modern small-batch chocolate movement traces to San Francisco in 1996, when John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg coined the term "bean-to-bar" to describe controlling the whole process from raw cacao bean to finished bar, rather than buying in ready-made chocolate to melt and mould. The idea spread slowly through the 2000s and then rapidly from around 2010 onward - by some counts, more than 2,500 small chocolate makers now operate worldwide, most of them founded within the last fifteen years.

The South West's own makers span that whole timeline. Kernow Chocolate in Wadebridge began almost by accident in 2004, when the Shapland family's Cornish food shop found that surviving as a retailer meant making their own products. What started on the family farm is now Cornwall's largest artisan chocolate factory, based in a former RAF St Eval Ministry of Defence building and employing more than twenty people, still entirely run by three generations of the same family - with a factory shop, cafe and viewing area where visitors can watch chocolatiers at work.

Nicola's Chocolate, on Blackboy Road in Exeter, is genuinely bean-to-bar in the strict sense: Nicola Knight left a career as a primary school teacher in 2017 to train as a qualified chocolate taster, sources cacao directly from small farms, and roasts, stone-grinds and tempers it by hand on site, with visitors able to watch the process and book tastings. She was named a Taste of the West Champion in 2024.

Hobbs Chocolates, based at Roborough on the edge of Plymouth, grew from a home venture into an award-winning brand that now exports as far as the United States, still run by Andy and Helen Hobbs as a family business, with bespoke wedding chocolates as a particular specialism. Melting Whisk in Dawlish represents the newest wave: Ash began making truffles at home during the 2022 lockdowns and has built it into a small-batch bonbon and bar business made without preservatives or added alcohol, sold online and at food festivals including Dartmouth Food Festival.

Barbers Bean to Bar, in Kingsteignton, is a fifth: an award-winning maker that roasts its organic, fairtrade beans lightly rather than cooking their character out, with bars including a Ugandan Crispy Mint 70% and a Tanzanian Dark 75%. Cocoa husks are blended with whole beans, black tea and herbs into a brewed tea, and packaging runs fully recyclable and biodegradable throughout - the environmental thinking extends through the operation rather than sitting on the label as an afterthought.

Maker	Location	Started	Known for
Kernow Chocolate	Wadebridge, Cornwall	2004-05	Cornwall's largest artisan chocolate factory; single-origin Macondo range
Nicola's Chocolate	Exeter, Devon	2021	True bean-to-bar; ethically sourced single-origin cacao
Hobbs Chocolates	Roborough, Plymouth	Home venture, formalised 2023	Bespoke wedding chocolates; exports to the USA
Melting Whisk	Dawlish, Devon	2022	Small-batch bonbons and bars, no preservatives or alcohol
Barbers Bean to Bar	Kingsteignton, Devon	Est. pre-2020	Light-roast bean-to-bar; organic, fairtrade beans, zero-waste husk tea

All five are listed on the Guide's Makers category, alongside a wider spread of South West producers working in chocolate and confectionery more broadly - this list reflects the businesses reviewed for this piece specifically, not a complete survey of every chocolate maker in the region.

Sources

• J. S. Fry & Sons, Bristol City Council Museum Collections and Wikipedia
• Somerdale Factory closure, BBC News (2011) and Wikipedia
• GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register, gov.uk / assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
• EFSA Journal 2012;10(7):2809 and Commission Regulation (EU) 2015/539
• British Heart Foundation, "Chocolate facts" and "Dark chocolate benefits"
• HEART UK, "Dark chocolate"
• Chocolate consumption and risk of cardiovascular diseases, Heart (BMJ), 2018/2019
• Cacao use and the San Lorenzo Olmec, PNAS

The Guide is the place to look for the region's independent Makers as new entries are added, chocolate and otherwise.