Yorkie’s name also has an interesting history (it was originally called Boulevard, then Variety, then Rations, then Trek).
But having watched Channel 4′s The Secret World of Chocolate, I was even more fascinated to learn why the bar was so chunky to begin with.
Which was?
Before Yorkie came about in 1976, Cadbury’s had just launched big hitters like the Curly Wurly and other, err, less-known brands like the banana-flavoured Perky Nana bar.
But “occasionally, super-brands ― of which Cadbury certainly was one ― make mistakes,” Eric Nicoli, a former new products manager for Rowntrees, revealed in the documentary.
And in the ’70s that “mistake” was making the bars “thinner” in the face of soaring cocoa prices, Sir Dominic Cadbury, former managing director of Cadbury’s, says.
“It opened up an opportunity, which Rowntree [Yorkie’s manufacturer] spotted,” Sir Dominic added.
So, Eric Nicoli worked on formulating the bar we now know as Yorkie. “It was six chunks, I think it was 58g,” he said in the documentary. “And people found it appealing ― because nothing else at the time was chunky anymore.”
He added the success was sneaky ― “we weren’t giving more [chocolate], we were just giving it in another format. It was a narrow surface area, and thicker.”
Nestlé now owns Yorkie instead of Rowntree’s as they bought the company in 1988 and only kept the name on certain products, like Fruit Pastilles.
And today, a personal-size Cadbury Dairy Milk bar is 45g, while a Yorkie jussst tips the scale at 46g.
The bar’s name changed a lot
As we’ve mentioned earlier, the bar’s name was going to be Rations, which Eric deemed “too austere,” then Trek, marketed to “pot-holers on their break.”
They’d even gone so far as to print the Trek packaging in 1975. “And then the bravest thing probably that I ever did was to go to my boss and to say, ‘I think [the name is] boring,’” Eric shared. “And I think we can do a lot better than this.”
His boss “backed us with the words, ’you’d better be bloody right,” Eric explained ― then they went with Yorkie, because “Rowntree was in York.”
The eventual product was marketed as the food of lorry drivers, as “citizen-band radio was a bit of a cult thing” at the time (like the kind lorry drivers use to communicate with one another).
The first Yorkie ad campaign used a jingle which sang, “Good rich and thick / A milk chocolate brick / Each bite a chunky, big mouthful.”
What a world, eh?