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On the 6th May Year 8 went to Birmingham to visit Cadbury’s Chocolate Factory to further their knowledge of industry and sustainability. During the long bus ride we all thought about what to expect – and also how much chocolate we were going to eat!
Entering the building felt magical as we were welcomed with three bars of delicious Cadbury chocolate. While munching on our chocolate bars we walked through an exhibition about the ancient art of making cocoa from beans. After this we moved into another room and had a short talk about John Cadbury and how his business grew.
After the talk we moved into another room, sat down on long benches and waited to see what would happen next. The lights dimmed and a man appeared on the screen as the benches started to move. We were ready to learn about the route of the cocoa bean once it had arrived from Ghana. Before the chocolate is ready to eat it has to go through three different factories, Bourneville, Marlbrook and Chirk. Between these three factories sugar and milk is added to the mixture as well as cocoa butter. Throughout the whole experience it felt like we were travelling with the cocoa bean as the seats moved and the atmosphere changed when the cocoa beans were heated or cooled.
Finally before lunch we went on a short ride but to get there we had to walk through the factory. As we walked we saw many different chocolates been wrapped up and packaged. Workers were demonstrating how the chocolate is moulded and even showing us how they decorated some incredible chocolate sculptures.
The best part of my day was the gift store as we got to indulge ourselves with a variety of different types of chocolate. Then we walked over to a picnic area and had some lunch followed by playing in an adventure park.
Once we had finished we went to a lecture theatre and learnt more about industry and how to promote a company. Our speaker Colin showed us many different adverts that Cadbury had made to advertise new products. He taught us about what companies have to think about when making a new product such as, what flavours would work well with each other? Who would the target audience be? How are we going to advertise our new product? We also learnt about how the cocoa beans are prepared and to appreciate all the hard work that the farmers have done to prepare the beans. This lead in to the next point of the presentation: fair trade. Cadbury is a fair trade company and if you look on your Chocolate Buttons packet or Diary Milk you might see the fair trade symbol. This was a very educational talk and I think we all left knowing a lot more than we did about the industry.
To end the day we went to a 4D theatre and enjoyed an entertaining cartoon adventure. We’d like to thank the Geography Department for taking us to Cadbury World – it was very informative and great fun!