Kit Kat
Kit Kat is a chocolate bar created by Rowntree's of York, England. It is produced globally by Nestlé, except in the United States, where it is made under licence by the H. B. Reese Candy Company, a division of the Hershey Company.
Standard Kit Kat bars have two or four pieces, known as “fingers.” Each finger has three layers of wafer covered in a thin coating of chocolate. Each finger can be snapped from the bar separately. There are many flavours of Kit Kat, including milk, white, and dark chocolate.
The original four-finger version of the bar was developed after a worker at Rowntree's York factory put a suggestion in the recommendation box for "a chocolate bar that a man could take to work in his pack up". It was launched in September 1935 in the UK as Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp, and the later two-finger version was launched in 1936. It was renamed Kit Kat Chocolate Crisp in 1937, and just Kit Kat after World War II.
Since making its first television appearance in a British commercial in 1958, the slogan for the Kit Kat in the UK and elsewhere has been "Have a break... have a Kit Kat". Since 1986 in the US, the jingle used in television advertisements includes the phrase “Gimme a break, Gimme a break, Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar!"
History
Use of the name Kit Kat or Kit Cat for a type of food goes back to the 18th century, when mutton pies known as Kit Kats were served at meetings of the political Kit-Cat Club in London owned by pastry chef Christopher Cat.The origins of what is now known as the Kit Kat brand go back to 1911, when Rowntree's trademarked the terms Kit Cat and Kit Kat. The names were not used immediately and Kit Kat first appeared in the 1920s, when Rowntree's launched a brand of boxed chocolates entitled Kit Cat. This continued into the 1930s, when Rowntree's shifted focus and production onto its Black Magic and Dairy Box brands. With the promotion of alternative products, the Kit Cat brand decreased and was eventually discontinued. The original four-finger bar was developed after a worker at Rowntree's York Factory put a suggestion in a recommendation box for a snack that "a man could take to work in his pack". The bar was officially launched in September 1935, under the title of Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp, and was sold in London and throughout southern England.
File:HK Shau Kei Wan 香港海防博物館 Museum of Coastal Defence HKMCD British foods 1940s Rowntree's Kit Kat Chocolate.JPG|thumb|upright=1.1|left|Exhibit of British foods in the 1940s during World War II. Pictured in blue wartime packaging, Rowntree's Kit Kat returned to red packaging after the war.
Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp was renamed as Kit Kat Chocolate Crisp in 1937. The colour scheme and first flavour variation to the brand came in 1942, owing to World War II, when food shortages prompted an alteration in the recipe. The flavour of Kit Kat was changed to dark chocolate; the packaging abandoned its Chocolate Crisp title, and was coloured blue. After the war the name became Kit Kat, with the original milk chocolate recipe and red packaging.
Following its success in the United Kingdom, in the 1940s, Kit Kat was exported to Canada, South Africa, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1957, Donald Gilles, the executive at JWT London, created the iconic advertising line "Have a Break, Have a Kit Kat". The brand further expanded in the 1970s when Rowntree created a new distribution factory in Germany to meet European demand and established agreements to distribute the brand in the US through the Hershey company, and in Japan through Fujiya.
In June 1988, Swiss company Nestlé acquired Kit Kat through the purchase of Rowntree's, giving Nestlé global control over the brand, except in the US, and production and distribution increased with new facilities in Japan and additional manufacturing operations set up in Malaysia, India and China.
The Hershey Company has a licence to produce Kit Kat bars in the United States which dates from 1970, when Hershey executed a licensing agreement with Rowntree which allowed Hershey to retain the Kit Kat licence so long as Hershey was not sold. Nestlé, which has a substantial presence in the US, had to honour the licensing agreement when it bought Rowntree in 1988. As Kit Kat is one of Hershey's top five brands in the US market, the Kit Kat licence was a key factor in Hershey's failed attempt to attract a serious buyer in 2002. Even Nestlé rejected Hershey's asking price. Nestlé's sale of its US confectionery business to Ferrara Candy Company in 2018 did not impact the Kit Kat bar, and thus rights would revert directly to Nestlé and not Ferrara in the event of a sale of Hershey.
Variants in the traditional chocolate bar first appeared in 1996 when Kit Kat Orange, the first flavour variant, was introduced in the UK. Its success was followed by several varieties including mint and caramel, and in 1999 Kit Kat Chunky was launched and received favourably by international consumers. Variations on the traditional Kit Kat have continued to be developed since then. In 2000, Nestlé acquired Fujiya's share of the brand in Japan, and also expanded its marketplace in Japan, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela, in addition to markets in Eastern and Central Europe. Throughout the decade, Kit Kat introduced dozens of flavours and line extensions within specific consumer markets. In September 2010, Kit Kat celebrated its 75th anniversary. Nestlé stated, "Since that momentous day in 1935, Kit Kat has firmly established itself in British culture, spreading its chocolate fingers far and wide that is sold in more countries than any other chocolate brand".
The traditional bar has four fingers which each measure approximately by. A two-finger bar was launched in the 1930s, and has remained the company's best-selling biscuit brand ever since. The 1999 Kit Kat Chunky has one large finger approximately wide. Kit Kat bars contain varying numbers of fingers depending on the market, ranging from the half-finger sized Kit Kat Petit in Japan, to the three-fingered variants in Arabia, and the twelve-finger family-size bars in Australia and France. Kit Kat bars are sold individually and in bags, boxes and multi-packs.
Global confection
Kit Kat bars are produced in 16 countries by Nestlé: Brazil, Mexico, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, Russia, Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Bulgaria, and Algeria. Kit Kat bars in the United States are produced under licence by The Hershey Company, a Nestlé competitor, due to a prior licensing agreement with Rowntree.The year 2003 was a turning point for the Kit Kat bar as well as the confectionery industry in general. The popularity of low carb diets, and the push to healthier eating stifled sales growth in many parts of the world. In addition, fierce competition from Cadbury's newly formed Dairy Milk superbrand also contributed to Kit Kat sales decreasing considerably in its home market of the UK, and threatened to depose it from its No.1 position. The solution adopted by Nestlé and others was to increase dramatically the number of new and unique variations of their confections and market them as limited or special editions, usually only available for a few months at a time so as not lose sales of their standard products. The strategy initially reversed the decline of the Kit Kat and has been adopted worldwide by Nestlé, Hershey, Mars, and others with similar success. This has resulted in many new flavours and varieties of the Kit Kat and other confections appearing globally since then.
In September 2006, Nestlé announced that they would be cutting 645 jobs in their York factory and moving all Smarties production to their Hamburg factory, which had already made up for two-thirds of production. They stated that this move would allow for a £20 million investment to modernise the antiquated York factory and improve Kit Kat production. In 2010, a new £5 million manufacturing line was opened by Nestlé in York, to produce more than one billion Kit Kat bars each year.
As dark chocolate has seen increased demand and favour worldwide because of its purported health benefits, in September 2006 the four-finger Kit Kat Fine Dark was launched in the United Kingdom as a permanent product. Hershey had sold the four-finger Kit Kat Dark in the US several years previously as a limited edition, and began doing so again.
Nestlé now manufactures two-finger Kit Kats with natural flavourings, and in February 2021 announced the rollout of the first vegan Kit Kat, called "KitKat V". In 2014, Kit Kat was ranked the third best selling chocolate bar in the United Kingdom, after Dairy Milk and Galaxy.
Sometimes considered a biscuit, in 2020 sales of Kit Kats were second to McVitie's biscuits in the UK in the biscuit category.
Design
When first introduced in the United Kingdom in 1935, the original Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp bar had a red wrapper, which briefly became blue between 1945 and 1947. The Kit Kat logo was added in 1937. As a result of milk shortages after the end of World War II – a period of rationing in the UK – dark chocolate was used instead of milk chocolate during that period.Since its introduction into the US in the 1970s, the Hershey's Kit Kat packaging and advertising has differed from the branding used in every other country where it was sold. In 2002, Hershey Kit Kats adopted the slanted ellipse logo used worldwide by Nestlé, though the ellipse was red and the text white. The US version of "Kit Kat Chunky" is known as "Big Kat".
In the United Kingdom, the product was traditionally wrapped in silver foil and an outer paper band. In 2001 this was changed to flow wrap plastic. Foil and paper wrapping is still used for Kit Kats sold as part of a multipack. In 2020, Kit Kat won the Lausanne Index Prize - Best of Packaging.