Original subtitles

We are, without doubt, a nation of chocolate lovers.

We eat, each of us, on average,

this much chocolate every year.

That's a whopping 266 bars each.

And the British love affair with chocolate begins here,

Liverpool Port.

Around 70,000 tons of cocoa beans arrive

into the UK every year.

They're trucked to factories all over Britain

and then used to feed our insatiable sweet tooth.

But how do you produce chocolate on this scale?

Whoa!

We've come to one of the World's largest chocolate makers

to find out.

I'm Gregg Wallace.

I love chocolate.

And I've been given exclusive access

to this giant factory in York...

Oh my word!

...to reveal how they make over 7-million bars in one day.

How much of a chocolate geek have you become?

Well, if I went on Mastermind,

I reckon I could get through that quite easy.

I'm Cherry Healey,

and I'm gonna get hands-on on a production line

in Derbyshire.

What is this?

Willie Wonka contraption.

[Gregg] And historian Ruth Goodman will delve

into the factory archives,

looking at chocolate's magic decade.

Isn't it lovely?

[Gregg] From bean to bar,

we're going to follow the amazing journey

of one of our best selling chocolates.

You'll never look at a chocolate bar the same way again.

This is the incredible story of the factories

that feed Britain.

This is the Nestle factory in York.

It's one of the largest chocolate manufacturers

in the world.

800 production staff work around the clock

to produce millions of bars a day,

which goes to every corner of the UK and Ireland.

On this site, we'll see how raw cocoa beans arrive

by truck and leave just 24 hours later

as chocolate bars ready for the supermarket.

And tonight, I'll be following the journey of the Kit Kat.

This is one of the most popular chocolate bars in the world.

We eat 1 billion of these every year in the UK alone.

That's a staggering 1,900 every single minute.

But whether you like your chocolate dark,

milk, or white, it all starts with the cocoa bean.

Every day, 120 tons of them arrive

at the bean-processing plant to start the production.

I'm going to roll up my sleeves

and help cocoa bean expert Steve Calpin

unload his latest delivery.

Do you know how many beans are on this truck?

I've never actually counted them,

but I think there'll be about 28 ton.

Just short of 30 ton?

Just short of 30 ton.

[Gregg excitingly screams]

That's an avalanche of beans.

In just 24 hours,

these beans will undergo an incredible transformation

and leave York as finished chocolate bars.

But their journey began thousands of miles away.

[energetic music]

90% of British chocolate begins life

as cocoa beans in West Africa.

The main harvest of pods from cocoa trees happens in March.

Once the beans have been collected,

they're dried in the African sun

and then packed and shipped to the UK.

[Gregg laughs]

It looks like a handful of grubby pebbles.

[Steve] Yeah.

So this has literally been transported straight

from the Ivory Coast?

Straight from the Ivory Coast.

And these are dried by the road,

so they've got bits of grit in it.

They've got bits of grit.

Dirt.

Yup.

We've had shoes, snakes.

- Really? - Yup.

Now the beans begin on a non-stop, 3-hour ride.

The aim is to crack their hard outer shell

and release the cocoa rich center.

Come on.

But first, they need to be cleaned.

Specially-sized holes on a metal plate allow the beans

to fall through but capture

larger pieces of rubbish on top.

It separates all the string and bits of rubbish.

I get it.

The beans you want drop through,

but anything bigger stays.

- And that's the way. - Brilliant.

But it's not just grit and rubbish

that have hitched a ride

over from Africa with the beans.

Sometimes there's treasure.

I tend to get coins.

Get yourself a drink.

Thanks, mate.

Where do I have to go?

- To the Ivory Coast to buy one? - The Ivory Coast, yeah.

[Gregg] Next up is the de-shelling.

What happens here,

we have a series of rollers in this machine here,

and as the beans go through it,

it crushes them and takes the shell off the nib.

[Gregg] The nib in the center of the bean is the holy grail

of chocolate making.

It contains all the cocoa solids and fats

that are the basis of chocolate.

There you are, Gregg.

- That's the nib? - That's the nib.

[Gregg] The last remaining shell pieces are vacuumed

off the nibs, and the clean ones are fed

into 3 giant ovens... and roasted.

The temperature of the ovens is so critical

to the recipe, it's kept a closely, guarded secret.

After an hour, the roasted nibs are fed

into a giant food processor,

which transforms them into a thick, brown liquid

called liquor.

The thing that's made it liquid like that is the fat

that's come out of the nib.

The same way that oil comes out of an olive,

your fat's coming out of the chocolate nib?

That's correct.

Have you added anything at all to this nib?

Just a bit of love and care and attention.

We all need a bit of that, mate.

I know.

[guitar music]

[Gregg] 8 tons of cocoa liquor is now piped

from the bean-processing plant to the factory next door.

Here, they will turn the bitter thick liquid

into hundreds of tons of sweet milk chocolate.

First, it needs to be mixed with the other ingredients.

Sean Konriko is the factory's chocolate specialist

and has been the keeper of recipes for over 38 years.

[Sean] All those stainless steel vessels

contain our liquid ingredients.

So there's cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, vegetable fat,

and then we take all our dry ingredients.

So sugar, our new components are all fed across

into this mixer.

[jumpy music]

[Gregg] The result is a course chocolatey powder churned

out at a rate of 9 tons an hour.

Conveyor belts drop the mixed ingredients

into the top of a giant, heated blender called a conche.

After cooking in the conches for over 7 hours,

the liquid chocolate is pumped out into giant vats.

And I cannot wait to taste it.

[Sean] Put your sample jar under there and just unwind that.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Gregg laughs]

- And here we are. - [Sean] Here we are.

We've got 28 tons of liquid chocolate

and a very happy, bald television presenter.

Fantastic.

Do you sell it by the pint?

Unfortunately, we don't sell it by the pint;

we sell it by the bar full.

[piano music]

[Gregg] They make 16 different chocolate recipes here

at the factory, a different one for each product.

But what I don't understand is why do they bother?

Why not just get one great recipe

and use it for all of them?

Vicky Geal is the Senior Confectioner in charge

of developing new flavors and product,

and she's gonna show me

why the chocolate recipe is so important.

Kit Kat chocolate is designed specifically for Kit Kat.

What I've done here is made some

with some different chocolates to prove

that other chocolates do not work.

What different chocolates?

The first one I've used a standard Kit Kat chocolate.

The second one is a Yorkie chocolate,

and the third one is a competitor chocolate,

which I shall not name.

See which you think is the best.

[guitar music]

Well, I can't really taste the chocolate on this one.

Let me try the middle one.

The chocolate's, um, creamier, rounded, deeper.

Let me try the last one.

That's the Kit Kat.

That's the original Kit Kat.

That is the original Kit Kat.

The insides are exactly the same on every product.

It's just the chocolate that's changed.

You've made your point, Vicky.

- [Vicky] There you go. - In a delightful way.

Let's have a hug.

So it turns out, even without realizing it,

we consumers expect a certain chocolate flavor

to be on a particular bar.

[machine beeping]

This 28 tons of melted chocolate is all going

to end up making just one kind of chocolate bar.

But Cherry's getting her hands dirty in Derbyshire

to learn how you make a chocolate box full

of many different varieties.

[joyful music]

[Cherry] I'm at Thornton's,

the largest chocolate manufacturer in the country.

They've been making chocolates for over a hundred years

and produced a colossal 25-million boxes every year.

Most of the chocolate made at Thorntons ends up

in boxes like these,

and while your first thought might be

to scramble for your favorite one,

you might be surprised to know how much work goes

into making each and every one.

Over a thousand people work in this Derbyshire factory,

and today I'm getting stuck in, too.

You need to put four blocks in.

Operations Manager, Nathan Worth, is teaching me

to make a Vanilla Truffle.

I don't think even I could eat all this in a day.

I could easily.

The truffle begins with the center made from chocolate,

sugar, and butter.

[Nathan] And now we'll mix it for a few minutes.

[Cherry] Oh, wow.

A hundred kilos of filling needs to be handfed

into the start of the production line.

- Oh, look at that massive blob. - That's it.

I think we're gonna lose you in there in a minute.

[Cherry] Bye.

It's like Willie Wonka's chocolate factory.

[Nathan] It's Willie Wonka without the Oompa-Loompas

and the chocolate vases, I'm afraid.

[Cherry] Then the mix is pulled through a cutter,

slicing into more centers than I've ever seen.

How many of these are in one row?

So there's 16 rows on here.

- 16 rows. - And on this line,

on this product, we run 62 rows a minute.

So an hour on here, we're making 55,000 chocolates an hour.

In a week, we could be making up to 25 million.

That is a staggering number of chocolates.

Yeah, and I think I eat a large percentage

of those while I'm working.

I'm right there with you.

[Nathan giggles]

[Cherry] This center gets individually drizzled

with a drink of chocolate.

[Nathan] This is an enrober.

Enrobing is where we put a curtain

of chocolate over the centers.

So what we're doing is we're drizzling the chocolate over,

so instead of molding it as a lot of people do,

we're actually coating it with chocolate.

[Cherry] Wow.

And the secret to perfect chocolate

is a process called tempering.

So we take the chocolate at 45 degrees,

cool that down to 25 degrees,

heat it back up to 30 degrees

to get the correct crystal structure.

What would happen if you didn't heat up

and cool the chocolate down?

What you'd find is it'd start going white,

go a little bit greasy.

It wouldn't snap if it was a bar of chocolate,

and it wouldn't eat nice.

So sometimes you'll see chocolate that's gone

a little bit gray.

That doesn't mean it's going moldy.

It just means the crystal structure has broken down,

and it's not how we want it to be.

[Cherry] Those gray bits are still perfectly safe to eat,

but to keep their chocolate looking its best,

all factories like this rely

on their giant tempering machines.

[Nathan] In this kind of machine here that's behind you,

it's the workhorse of the factory,

but actually, nobody ever really sees it.

Oh, no, it's the unsung hero of your factory.

I appreciate you, Turbo-- um, Temper.

[Nathan laughs]

I appreciate you.

Once the first milk chocolate layer cools and sets,

it's ready for a smothering of white chocolate.

The vibrating conveyor belt shakes

off the excess chocolate to make sure

each one weigh's exactly the same.

Wow.

It's a river of chocolate.

But what comes next is the real magic.

Every one of the truffles is skillfully hand decorated

with not a machine in sight.

Oh, wow.

It really is done by hand.

[Nathan] No machinery at this point.

And away you go.

Oh, that's really fun.

Oh, no, I messed it up.

[Worker] No, no, they're fine.

[Cherry] Uh, uh!

Got it.

Goes really quick.

- I missed one. - No problem.

You're gonna have to pick up my slack.

That's no problem at all.

Do you think that people don't really appreciate

how much work goes into a piece of chocolate?

I think when people bite them

'cause they don't realize how much we do do here.

I think they probably think there's a machine does this.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

Look at you go.

[worker laughs]

- I mean, you're a demon. - Years of practice.

Years of practice.

How long have you been doing this?

Well, I've worked here for 21 years.

21 years.

So you're a pro?

I'd hope so by now.

Is it hard to be doing this and not take one?

It's extremely hard, and I'm a total chocoholic.

I love it.

[Cherry] One down, but they are still 11 varieties short

of a chocolate box, so the team keep on going.

I'm blown away by the effort

to hand decorate the chocolates,

but I do worry for whoever has to pack them into boxes.

It turns out this is one area where even humans need a hand.

A team of lightening-fast robots pack the chocolates

into trays.

The robots have laser-guided eyes that can tell the shape

of each chocolate and where it is on the conveyor belt.

They then rotate the chocolates

to match them up exactly with the shape in the trays.

This area last year did over 30-million finished boxes.

[Cherry] And they can do it with absolute precision

over and over again.

Despite all the machinery and high-tech robots,

it still takes over a 100 people to make a box

of chocolates like this one.

So think about that next time you're squabbling

over who gets the last one.

[eerie music]

[Gregg] Back in York,

I've moved from the chocolate factory

to wafers.

Wafer Line Manager, Mark Barratt, has worked here

for over 20 years.

He used to make the chocolate, but for him now,

the filling is more than just the middle; it's everything.

What's better? Chocolate or wafer?

- Wafer. - Why?

That's the beginning of it. That's the middle.

If you don't get that great snap, you haven't got the bar.

Do you think you might be turning into a bit

of a chocolate bar anorak, Mark?

I think I'm there; I've been there a while.

What is the first step to making a wafer?

So we start off making a batter mix with flour

and water and a few pretty special ingredients

that we like to keep to ourself.

[Gregg] Flour from giant silos outside is fed

into the mixers.

These mixers work around the clock,

producing 40 kilos of batter every minute.

But mixing all that is one thing.

How on earth are you gonna bake it all?

You start by piping it

into a hundred hinged waffle irons called carriers.

The top of the carrier shoots down.

As it shoots down, the batter spreads,

and it builds a rectangle.

- Gotcha - Yeah.

[Gregg] Conveyor belts take the squashed batter squares

directly into 100-foot long ovens.

After just two minutes at 150 degrees,

the carriers leave the ovens, open up,

and spit out rich, golden wafers.

Oh!

There we are, popping out.

Mate, they're like carpet tiles,

or they're like lino tiles.

[Mark] Yeah.

Shall we have a look at one?

There you go.

It's like an enormous poppadom.

It doesn't seem that crispy.

No.

Sorry.

I'll clean it up.

To crisp up the wafers,

they're fed into a cooling rack,

snaking 30 feet into the air to save space,

over an arch on the second floor,

then back down stairs.

After cooling, they come down that ski slope,

come along here,

and then the filling is spread on top of the sheet.

[Gregg] The sweet filling is made

of coco liquor and sugar.

It's like a perfectly, precisely buttered piece of toast.

That's right.

The same level all the time, the same thickness.

[Gregg] Then, the machine stacks on coated wafer

on top of another coated wafer.

Okay 1, 2 and then, we've got some coming

over the top, which haven't got filling on.

[Gregg] And the result,

every 5 seconds perfectly lined up spare of two layers

of filling sandwiched between 3 layers of wafer.

A team of robots then stacks the wafers,

cuts them into blocks,

and then sends the block to be covered in chocolate.

[birds chirping]

Historian Ruth Goodman's been looking

at chocolate's magic decade.

[Ruth] One of the earliest memories we probably all share

is visiting the sweet shop.

It's usually the first time as children we get

to spend our own money.

[cash register dings]

But the chocolate bars we buy today are likely

to be exactly the same as those

that our parents bought or our grandparents,

even our great grandparents when they were young.

They all originate in the same amazing 10-year period.

Roald Dahl once likened it as the chocolate equivalent

of the Italian Renaissance for painting,

and that decade was the 1930s.

[classical music]

The 1930s witnessed a huge social shift

in British society.

Improved working conditions meant people had more time off.

And this new concept of leisure time brought a shift

in buying habits.

Until now, chocolate had been an expensive treat

for the wealthy and mostly only bought on special occasions.

Suddenly, cheaper manufacturing costs meant

it could be made for a lot less.

90% of the country could now afford

to buy chocolate regularly.

A new mass market had been created

at the beginning of the decade,

and now it was up to the chocolatiers to feed it.

Amongst the first of the block was an American.

In 1932, the Mars Bar caused quite a stir.

[jazz music]

A so-called combination bar,

it added a core to the standard chunk of chocolate

that Britain was used to,

an American invention that were considered low rent

and faddish by chocolate makers

on this side of the Atlantic.

And so began what had been called the "Chocolate Wars."

Terry's gave us the Chocolate Orange in 1932.

Rowntree's responded with both the Aero

and the Kit Kat in 1935.

Cadbury's contribution was the Whole Nut,

and Roses in 1938,

and Mars fought back with the Milky Way and Maltesers.

Suddenly, the high street was choc-a-block with chocolate.

Ooh!

Isn't it lovely?

[Ruth] Down through the generations,

we are still remarkably faithful

to these original brands first invented

in the chocolate decade.

[Gregg] Here in York, we've got bean to liquor to chocolate.

And now, the filled wafers are arriving

in the final production hall by the thousands.

In this final stage, all the elements

of the chocolate bar are put together.

Bill Ashley, Factory Quality Manager, is going

to show me how.

You've seen how we make wafer,

and you've seen how we make chocolate.

Well, this is the plant where we put both wafer

and chocolate together.

So the chocolate gets deposited into a mold.

You can see on the mold here we have an impression

on the bottom of the mold,

so when the chocolate gets deposited on there,

and the bar finally gets de-molded,

you can see Kit Kat on the top.

Chocolate gets squirted in here?

- -Yes. - It's traveling along.

[Gregg] Then what happens?

[Bill] Then, we put the wafer into the mold itself.

[Gregg] The filled wafers are cut to size

and dropped into the molds on top of the chocolate.

You can now see the chocolate underneath the wafer.

I don't know how the chocolate gets on top of the wafer.

[violin music]

This snack is gradually coming together.

What's the next stage?

Okay, so now we put chocolate on the back of the bar.

Chocolate comes down the pipe, gets deposited here,

and then just gets spread across the mold.

[Gregg] That's a beautiful thing.

That's like a chocolate tide crashing onto a beach.

That's right.

[Gregg] How come the chocolate doesn't stick to the mold?

[Bill] Okay, well, that's the next important process.

You just wanna take hold of that mold.

Try and twist that.

- No. - No, it's solid;

it's hard plastic.

If you look down here,

can you see how those molds are being twisted

on either side?

[Gregg] That's very much how we would get ice cubes

out of an ice cube mold.

Does it have to be horrible pink color?

[Bill] It's pink so we can differentiate

with the chocolate.

So they're cool by now, aren't they?

They are, yes.

They're cool, and they're solid at this stage.

Give me a mold-- I'll get them out.

While I'm helping to de-mold,

back at Thorntons in Derbyshire,

Cherry is having a sugar rush.

[violin music]

[Cherry] Easter is second only to Christmas

for chocolate sales,

and here at Thorntons,

they make over 9 million eggs each year.

They've been making Easter eggs here since 1922,

but what I've wanted to know ever

since I was a kid is how on earth do they make them hollow?

What comes first?

The chicken or the egg?

Well, when it comes to Easter eggs,

- it's actually the mold. - Oh.

So what we do is we have a mold

that we're gonna actually form the egg in.

[Cherry] Melted chocolate is squirted inside one half

of the egg-shaped mold.

Then, decorations are added.

[Nathan] We'll then put a second mold on top of the first.

We'll put that into a magnetic frame,

and we'll put it onto one of these machines

over here called The Spinner.

[Cherry] Wow.

So it's a chocolate wall installation.

The molds are rotated in every direction

to thoroughly coat the inside with chocolate.

[Nathan] Because chocolate keeps setting,

it'll steadily build up a layer of chocolate

on the inside of that mold so it's really nice and even.

It'll give you that perfect, hollow shell.

[Cherry] As the chocolate dries,

it sticks to the mold, leaving a void in the middle.

So the machine mixes it around and around...

-and around? - [Nathan] Yeah.

And then, just let the chocolate move to the edges.

It's easier to put it on a machine

than stand there for 15 minutes doing that.

[Cherry] Before the eggs leave the factory...

Ah! Magic.

Nathan gives me one of the 9 million to try.

That's pretty good.

That is hot off the press.

You can't get a fresher Easter egg than that.

And it's definitely hollow.

Yeah, we've only got another 8 million 999,999 to go then.

[rock music]

[Gregg] Back here on the production line in York,

the team are pumping out 3,000 2-fingered chocolate bars

every minute.

Before they're loaded on trucks to come your way,

they need to be wrapped and packed.

What are you doing?

You seem to be throwing chocolates away.

We're picking off ones which are not of a good standard.

Do you know they all look exactly the same to me.

No, well, they don't to us.

What's wrong with that one?

Well, we can see the wafer, so that's wafer reveal.

Apart from wafer reveal.

We have footballs on the chocolate.

Also, the chocolate is not as shiny as it normally is.

Mate, you're being a little too fussy.

Look, I'm a customer.

- All right? - [Julie giggles]

It doesn't bother me.

How much of a chocolate geek have you become?

Well, if I went on Mastermind,

I reckon I could get through that quite easy.

Specialist subject: the Kit Kat.

Yes.

What happens to all of the ones you're throwing away?

They all go into rework where they're used

for the fillings for the wafers.

What's the filling for the wafer?

Well, as you can see here, we have a wafer--

Oh, in between the wafers?

Yes, that's right.

I saw that put on.

Right, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

- Brilliant. - Do you understand that?

- Brilliant. - Right, good.

[Gregg] It is incredible how many chocolate bars

are being produced here with so few people.

As high tech as all this seems,

they've actually been making chocolate here

for over 100 years, but back then,

the factory floor would have looked very, very different.

[jumpy music]

[Ruth] In the shadow of the modern factory,

there's a monument to chocolate-making past.

This is the old Rowntree's factory in York.

It was acquired by Nestle in the late 1980s,

and there was so much rich history that they appointed

a dedicated Rowntree Historian, Alex Hutchinson,

to preserve its significant past.

I've been given access to the old site

and its archives to discover just why it's so special.

In comparison to other factories at the time,

was this a good one, a bad one?

This was a good one; this was a very good one.

Everybody wanted to work for Rowntree's.

Very good pensions.

If you were ill, there was a doctor.

If you need a dentist, you'd see a dentist,

and they would look after you.

They would look after you very, very well indeed.

[Ruth] The Rowntree's were Quakers,

a religious society formed in England in the 17th century.

The highly moral Quaker grocers were trusted

to produce unadulterated chocolate.

[train horn honks]

And so, a handful of these Quaker families

became the top chocolate makers in Britain.

Birmingham had Cadburys.

Bristol had Fry's, and York had Rowntree's.

The Rowntree family are Quaker.

Do you think that made a difference

to how they did business?

Very much so. They wanted to treat their workers

like they were part of their family.

They didn't want to view them as cogs in a machine.

[Ruth] To improve their workers' lives,

the Rowntree family designed a factory

that was bright and airy and chocked full of perks.

You've got your theater, library, ballroom,

sports grounds and, of course,

there's a sick pay, paid holiday.

[Ruth] And the wage packet was quite healthy, too.

The welfare pioneered in chocolate factories

was soon adopted across Britain.

While the founding members

of the Rowntree family may have passed on,

the community they created lasted for generations.

[electronic music]

But by the late 1980s,

consumer demand for cheaper chocolate saw the beginning

of the end for the old ways.

The more labor intensive parts of the production lines

were replaced with mechanized systems

and machines capable of churning out chocolates

by the millions.

The way we make chocolate may well have changed,

but the legacy of those early chocolate makers lives on.

[machine beeping]

[Gregg] Here at Nestle,

we're 21 hours into the chocolate-making process.

And we've already got millions of chocolate bars ready

to be eaten.

But before that can happen, they need packing up.

In this factory 3 and a half million

of these chocolate bars need

to be individually wrapped every day.

[electronic music]

First, it's the foil wrap,

and then the paper.

27 feet are used every second.

Then they're bundled into multi-packs.

Ex-army man Scott Robinson

gives the bars one last inspection

before they're packed into boxes with military precision.

Why with all this machinery are we packing them by hand?

Because we can actually...

You get a better quality finish.

People can see anything that's gone wrong.

The machines can go.

You can have sensors,

but they won't feel or see things that are not right.

- Can I have a go? - [Scott] Yup, feel free.

Come on, down you come. Here we go now. Lovely.

Like that?

- Fold it that way now. - Ugh, quick, quick.

Push it through there.

That's it; nice and gently. Make sure it's square.

I ain't got time to be gently.

It's not as easy as it looks.

Oh my god.

For crying out loud, we've got an avalanche happening here.

- How many do you lift at a time? - 5.

What have you got? Hands like a bear?

[Scott laughs] I'm just lucky.

[Gregg] Oh, that's it; just dump another load at the front.

Make it harder.

[Scott laughs]

[Gregg] This is actually physically quite challenging.

[Scott] It is.

- Do you dream about it? - Not anymore.

Stop 'em; they're gonna roll off the end.

The box really slows you down.

So they've sold the whole principal on this

on having a break, yet me and you don't get one.

There's a bit of an irony there.

Don't you think so, Scott?

Yeah, you need it.

Panic's setting in here.

[Gregg Laughs]

You're gonna have to come and help me, mate.

I can't get 'em done quick enough.

- Look. - Give it a go then.

I've tried me best, Scott.

Yeah, you've done well.

[Cherry] Chocolate has been our favorite sweet treat

for over 200 years.

But it's not imported chocolate we buy the most of.

The top 3 selling brands in the UK: Dairy Milk, Kit Kat

and Snickers are all made right here.

So what is it about British chocolate

that we all find so irresistible?

To find out, I've come to meet Master Chocolatier,

Paul A Young.

He's won many awards for making chocolates

with a uniquely British flavor.

I feel like I'm meeting chocolate royalty.

You are definitely the most qualified person to answer this.

Why do we love British chocolate so much?

It makes us really happy.

- It does. - It does.

It makes me so happy.

It's not just the sugar; it's the feeling,

the texture, the nostalgic reminiscence

of childhood of when you first had it.

Hand anyone chocolate, and they'll smile.

[Cherry] These days, we have the choice of chocolate

from any country we like, but yet we still choose British.

What is it about foreign chocolate

that just doesn't sit right with us?

[Paul] We are tuned to love British chocolate

from being very young, but there are chocolates

from all around the world: America, Belgium, Switzerland,

Holland, France, you name it,

and it's all specifically different

and tailored to the pallet of the country.

[Cherry] So it seems we all hanker after the chocolate

we ate as children.

But can we really taste the difference

between British and foreign brands?

Paul and I are going to put the great British public

to the test.

We're going to take 4 different chocolates

from 4 different countries and see which one people prefer.

But first, we need to melt down the chocolates

and reset them in a similar shape.

So they all look the same,

and no one will be able to tell which one is which.

- They won't. - Wha-ha-ha

It's a secret.

[Cherry] Milk chocolate is made up of cocoa, sugar, and milk,

but the proportions can vary according

to its country of origin.

[Paul] We've got 4 varieties of milk chocolate.

So we've got Belgian, American, British, and Swiss.

The Swiss is very, very milky, incredibly smooth,

light color.

I think most people would say,

"That's a nice milky chocolate."

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the American.

- Ugh! - I mean it is.

This is probably the biggest selling American chocolate.

So what is it that gives it

that "to be polite" distinctive flavor and taste?

It's the milk crumb,

and they manipulate it to create butyric acid.

That gives it the cheesy, sour, really off smell

and taste to us, and did you know that butyric acid

is a component of vomit?

Ah, that's not okay.

It's not okay for me.

Do you think most people would be able

to tell the difference between these 4 types of chocolate?

I think I will,

and I think the British chocolate will be

the most popular.

[Cherry] But will Paul be right?

With all the chocolates cleverly disguised,

we're taking to the streets to see

if people really do prefer British chocolate.

Hi, is there any way that we could tempt you

to try some chocolate?

- Yeah? - We're doing a taste test.

- Yeah, should we? - Yes!

Do you wanna try some before your main course?

[Cherry] First they try the American version.

Um, no?

You don't like that?

- But there's an aftertaste. - There is.

[Cherry] What is the aftertaste?

Like off milk.

[Cherry] And it seems that American chocolate isn't a hit

with British taste buds anywhere we go.

I'm not particularly impressed with that.

It's got this really bitter taste to it.

It's actually a bit sicky.

It's too [indistinct]

It's not nice.

[Cherry] In fact, out of the 4:

American, British, Belgian and Swiss,

it was the British chocolate that came out the winner.

It's just a different texture. It's creamier.

That's a bit more like

a bit more dairy milk chocolate kind of taste.

It's nice.

[Cherry] From garages... to hairdressers.

Creamier than the first and second one.

Really smooth, really rich.

That's very creamy, I think.

[Man] Okay.

We have a winner on our hands.

- It is the British chocolate. - Well done.

So obviously people still love British chocolate,

but no one's picked American.

[Cherry] No one's picked American.

We did find some people

who like American chocolate: Americans.

[trumpet music]

Oh.

I'm gonna have to change all of my answers.

That's definitely American.

That's my favorite.

It's just sort of like bringing home

to you versus you having to go home.

It doesn't taste fake to me,

and that's why I think it's pretty great.

Whether we want a bar to treat ourselves or as a comfort,

we know what we like,

and we like the familiar,

but it's those childhood memories

that keep us Brits so loyal to the chocolate that we love.

[piano music]

[Gregg] 22 hours after the beans first came on site,

the wrapped chocolate bars are now ready for customers.

A team of 30-foot high robots now stack them onto pallets.

And conveyor belts take them to a warehouse

to await distribution.

But, with 4 million chocolate bars to deal with every day,

this is no ordinary warehouse.

Distribution Manager Sally Wright has let me inside.

Oh my word!

Crying out loud.

I didn't realize this much chocolate actually existed

in the world.

Good grief.

[Gregg laughs]

What do you call this place?

This is the Building.

- The Building? - The Building.

[Gregg] Every single pallet of chocolate is stored,

monitored, and moved by robots.

Once the stock's been fed into the Building

by the conveyor belt,

the humans no longer have any control

over what happens to it.

[Sally] We don't have human's controlling it.

We don't have fork truck drivers in here.

The Building knows where all the empty spaces are,

where all the stock is.

When we have orders, it knows where to go and get the stock.

When we have fresh stock coming in,

it knows where to put it away.

It self controls.

The Building runs itself?

Pretty much so, yeah.

We watch over it with a computer system,

but ultimately, it self manages.

[Gregg] From the moment the chocolate comes

into the Building,

the 5 giant unnamed cranes stack the pallets,

store them, and then send them to the loading area

when the orders come in.

Do humans get in those?

The engineers do, yeah.

Could I have a ride on one of them?

Yes, we can arrange that.

Whoa!

[Gregg laughs]

Whoa!

Whoa!

Whoa!

Will it stop before the wall at the end?

It may do.

[Gregg laughs]

[rock music]

This is nuts.

All that to give us a chocolate bar?

Yup.

It's a strange world.

It takes the building just one week

to get through its entire stock of chocolate.

Every day up to 60 trucks are loaded from the dispatch hall

at this site

and leave York with chocolate destined

for shops and supermarkets all over the UK and Ireland.

The next time you open a bar of chocolate,

just think it is one very small part

of an enormous, global chocolate empire.

Wow.