Kraft takeover bid of Cadbury leaves bitter taste in Britain

It’s not just chocolate but memories that are made in this genteel company town founded when Victoria reigned.

Take the Cadbury Flake, which for many Brits conjures up childhood images of an afternoon at the seaside, with a flaky spear of chocolate stuck into a dripping vanilla cone.

Or Cadbury Creme Eggs, so rich and gooey they make your teeth hurt, now as much an Easter tradition in Britain as bonnets, bunnies and ham.

Or the Milk Tray assortment, which gray-haired pensioners who remember Cadbury’s wartime “Ration Chocolate” buy for their grandkids.

It’s the ultimate comfort food in a nation where dental health has always come a poor second to the craving for something sweet. Like fish and chips or Marmite, Cadbury’s chocolate is part of what it means to be British, a piece of identity you can taste.

Which is why so many here are aghast as Cadbury, Britain’s No. 1 candy maker, fights off a hostile takeover bid from Kraft Foods, the mighty conglomerate from across the ocean. To hear the critics tell it -- and there are plenty of them, from politicians to celebrity chefs to regular consumers -- plucky British chocolate is up against the big American cheese.

It’s been a bitter battle.

Kraft has moved aggressively to woo Cadbury’s investors, sweetening its $17-billion bid with offers of more cash in hand. The Illinois-based food giant, best known for its macaroni and cheese and similar items, calls marriage with Cadbury a natural fit that would open up new markets for both companies’ products around the world. Kraft has until Tuesday to submit an improved offer.

But Cadbury executives and workers are having none of it. They denounce the bid as a “derisory” one that grossly undervalues their firm. They accuse debt-ridden Kraft of shoddy management and, worse, arrogance in trying to “steal” their company from under them, which they say could threaten tens of thousands of jobs.

Never mind that Cadbury has shut down some of its plants to cut costs in recent years, or that a company that has long prided itself on treating its workers well has outsourced some production to Eastern Europe.

Here in Bournville, the firm’s historic center in central England, many Cadbury employees resent the idea of their company being swallowed up by big, bad corporate America -- a feeling replicated throughout the rest of the country.

“I would be devastated if it got taken over by Kraft,” said Louisa Brown, a grandmother who lives in London. “There’s a general feeling around that says, ‘Oh no, not another British institution and tradition going over to the Americans.’ You wonder if any of them will be left soon.”

Nostalgia

“Keep Cadbury British” campaigns have sprung up on the Internet and in the tabloid press. For backers, Cadbury is not just a successful homegrown company but a national icon, one that lies close to the heart -- and stomach -- of Britons’ sense of themselves, a potent mix of history and nostalgia rolled into one.

Virtually everyone in this country has grown up with Cadbury as part of the fabric of British life, akin to how Hershey’s seems woven into the experience of countless Americans. (Hershey is rumored to be mulling a rival bid for Cadbury but has not put forward an offer yet.)

“Chocolate is emotional in a way because it’s so culturally specific,” said Allyson Stewart-Allen, director of International Marketing Partners, a London-based consulting firm. “It’s one of those flavors and tastes that’s imprinted on you from a young age.”

In its effort to acquire Cadbury, Kraft has at times appeared to underestimate the depth of feeling Britons hold toward their favorite candy maker.

In recent years, a number of well-loved domestic brands have fallen into foreign hands, each one accompanied by hand-wringing over the seemingly perpetual process of British imperial decline.

Two years ago, for example, Britons lamented the sale of Jaguar and Land Rover to India-based Tata Motors, a takeover they cited as a case of the former empire striking back. Critics muttered that the cars’ quality and sales would suffer because of the change of ownership, but those predictions have largely failed to materialize.

Cadbury, though, is different because of its mass appeal, cutting across age and class. Its products connect with millions more consumers, in literally a more visceral way, than those wealthy enough to afford a Jaguar.

That means that far more people will be on the lookout for even the slightest change to what they’ve known and loved since childhood.

A common refrain in the chorus of criticism of Kraft is fear that the company may modify the Cadbury taste to make it more like American chocolate, which many Brits find waxy, bitter and too ghastly for words. (The standard recipes for chocolate are different in the two countries.)

“Any Brit who has ventured Stateside can testify to how utterly revolting American chocolate is,” columnist Antonia Senior wrote in the Times of London. “We may have ceded our position as top dog to the United States, we may resemble a desperate-to-please puppy, yapping up at our former colony demanding attention, but at least we can make a chocolate bar.”

Kraft’s reply

A Kraft spokesman sought to allay concerns that the company would tamper with the famous Cadbury flavor.

“We recognize the loyalty to Cadbury brands and would not want to damage their affection for the brands,” spokesman Michael Mitchell said.

Besides taste, Cadbury comes freighted with cultural and historical associations that hold a powerful appeal to the contemporary British psyche.

In an age that rewards highflying financiers and reveres potty-mouthed celebrities, the company and its civic-minded past helps remind Britons of their kinder, gentler selves, of a bygone era of fellow-feeling and community values.

Cadbury started out nearly 200 years ago as a modest tea shop selling cocoa in the central English city of Birmingham.

By the late 1800s, the company had become an enormously successful chocolatier, earning the title of royal supplier to Queen Victoria.

But it remained a family firm, run by owners devoted to philanthropy and paternalism. George Cadbury, a son of the original shop owner, built Bournville, a few miles outside Birmingham, as a “model village” where his factory workers had access to housing, schools and the great outdoors (but no pubs, please -- he was a teetotaling Quaker).

The company has maintained its record of community service and its commitment to contributing to the well-being of British society, if not exactly to the state of its teeth. Commentators gush about Cadbury’s historically “moral approach to capitalism.”

Longtime workers still remember Cadbury family members wandering the shop floor and stopping to talk to staff.

Nowadays, no one named Cadbury sits on the board of directors, the company has morphed into more of a modern corporation and the talk is of profit margins and vision statements. The Bournville plant, still the flagship, employs only about 1,000 manufacturing staff, barely a tenth the size of the workforce 30 years ago.

But several workers said in interviews that they still regard Cadbury as a good place to work. The union representing them contends that as many as 30,000 jobs could be threatened if the company is acquired by Kraft.

“At the moment we feel safer staying with Cadbury than moving over,” said Tim King, 49, who started working here at the Bournville factory as a teenager.

Like the people who buy the candies they make, Cadbury workers want to see their company remain independent rather than absorbed into corporate America. “It’s about retaining British citizenship,” said King.

His colleague Bob Graham put it this way to an American visitor.

“We grew up with Cadbury’s; you grew up with Kraft,” said Graham, 50. “How would you like it if we went over there and took over Kraft?”

henry.chu@latimes.com

Times staff writer Janet Stobart contributed to this report.