The First Chocolate Bar Ever Produced Wasn't Made By Hershey Or Cadbury

These days, you can walk down the candy aisle and have your pick from dozens of chocolate bars in a variety of flavors, everything from plain dark chocolate to cookies and cream flavored to caramel-stuffed. But it wasn't always like this. Once upon a time, chocolate was mainly consumed as a beverage, not a solid, and was most commonly used to disguise the taste of medicine. The first chocolate bar wasn't made by Milton Hershey or John Cadbury, but by a man named Joseph Storr Fry.

Fry and his family's company, then known as the England-based J.S. Fry & Sons, created chocolate bars in 1847, although chocolate itself had been a coveted commodity for thousands of years in liquid form. The chocolate bar's humble beginning came when Fry discovered a moldable, solid form after he mixed melted cocoa butter with sugar, chocolate liquor, and Dutch cocoa powder. While a groundbreaking invention, the first ever candy bar wasn't exactly child-friendly due to caffeine content. Chocolat Délicieux à Manger by Fry's hit the market that year as the first chocolate in bar form. Although the invention may not have been quite as sweet as the chocolate we know today (perhaps another fact you should know about chocolate), it was a major turning point in confectionery history.

Before becoming legendary chocolatiers, the Frys were apothecaries, working in medicine and pharmacy. The original Joseph Fry operated a storefront named Fry, Vaughan & Co. in the 1700s, which specialized in the medicinal use of chocolate, even going so far as to purchase a reputable chocolate company to further his business. By the time Joseph Fry passed away in 1787, his son, Joseph Storr Fry, was heavily involved with the business. The company officially became J.S. Fry & Sons in 1822, already well established as a big player in the English cocoa industry.

J.S. Fry & Sons might have been the first to invent chocolate bars, but the creation took off among several other chocolatiers. By 1868, the England-based Cadbury rose to popularity with "Fancy Boxes," an assortment of chocolates, and by 1900, Milton Hershey jumped on the chocolate bar frenzy with the release of his namesake bar (which is getting its own movie by the "Mean Girls" director). Fry's remained competitive in the chocolate market for several years, introducing the world to the chocolate cream bar, but the success of the business didn't last forever. Profit began to dip, factories and equipment aged, and eventually, Cadbury purchased Fry's in 1919, keeping it operational until it phased out the Fry brand in 1981.