Happy 80th birthday to KitKat

One of Britain’s best loved brands, which was launched in London in September 1935, is said to have been created after a Rowntree employee came up with the idea of a 'chocolate bar that a man could take to work in his pack up.'

Rowntree decided to try to make a chocolate bar that would be more affordable for a working man, and they used wafer to fill the product and keep the price below that of a solid chocolate bar. It was called Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp on its launch but was re-branded as KitKat Chocolate Crisp two years later.

An image of the original "Kit-Cat" box

Nestlé, which now makes three million bars every day at its factory in Haxby Road, York, said that with its trademark red wrapper and chocolate fingers, it had not just stood the test of time but had never stopped moving with it.

"From humble beginnings in Yorkshire, a mere £1,750 investment was all that was needed to launch KitKat, giving the start it needed to go on and become the global confectionery brand it is today," said Nestlé archivist Alex Hutchinson.

"Since that momentous day in 1935, KitKat has firmly established itself in British culture and continues to be one of the biggest global confectionery brands, with more than 17 billion KitKat fingers eaten across the globe each year and KitKat bars sold in more countries than any other confectionery brand."

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Andrew McIver, managing director of Nestlé Confectionery in the UK and Ireland, attributed its success to the fact that it had stuck to its roots as well as its ability to move fast in the changing business environment.

“With a brand that’s 80 years young, it’s important to celebrate reaching this milestone, but actually the most important thing is to plan for the future," he said.

The spokeswoman said the brand’s name had a longer history than the bar itself. "Kit Kat was originally the name of a seventeenth Century literary and political club that met in the pie shop of a pastry cook called Christopher Catling, Mr Catling’s names being more easily shortened to Kit and Cat.

"Rowntree’s first registered the names Kit-Cat and KitKat as early as 1911, but waited until the 1920s before launching a boxed chocolate assortment with the name."

She added that Kit-Cat and the other boxed assortments were gradually phased out in the early 1930s, leaving two strong brands: Black Magic and Dairy Box.