Chocolate Origins: The Sweet Story Behind the First Bar

The first chocolate bar was invented in 1847 by a man named Joseph Fry. Before that, people only drank chocolate as a sweet, frothy drink.

Before there were candy bars in shiny wrappers, chocolate was something you sipped, not chewed. For thousands of years, from the ancient Maya to 18th-century Europeans, chocolate was a warm, spicy, or sweet drink made from ground cacao beans.

Then along came Joseph Fry, a British chocolatier with a clever idea. He figured out how to mix cocoa powder, sugar, and melted cacao butter into a moldable paste. Once it cooled, voilà, the first solid chocolate bar was born.

At the time, this was revolutionary. Imagine a world with no chocolate bars. No Hershey's, no Snickers, no foil-wrapped treats at the checkout line. Fry’s invention completely changed how people enjoyed chocolate, and helped spark the modern candy industry.

Here’s a delicious detail: those early bars were darker and more bitter than what we’re used to today. Milk chocolate didn’t come along until nearly 30 years later, thanks to Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter (with help from his neighbor… Henri Nestlé!).

And did you know the Maya called chocolate “xocolatl,” meaning “bitter water”? It was so prized, cacao beans were even used as currency.