I Just Learned Why Yorkie Bars Are So Chunky, And It's Pretty Clever

  (The Huffington Post) : We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about why Twix, Snickers, and Hobnobs are called what they are.  Yorkie’s name also has an interesting history (it was originally called Boulevard, then Variety, then Rations ? after Yorkshire, where the bar was made ? in a last-minute panic when all the former names had been ditched).  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, ..