Chocolate dreams for York

A TANTALISING aroma, familiar to any York resident, greets you as you park up outside Cadbury's chocolate factory in Birmingham. The huge, brick factory buildings also look remarkably familiar to anyone who has driven past Nestl Rowntree and Terry's.

But there's one big difference. York may be a great tourist city, but visitors and residents alike get little more than a whiff of what could be one of its biggest assets and attractions. However in Birmingham, they can visit Cadbury World, built alongside the long-standing chocolate factory in 1990.

The complex, which I visited last weekend, is little less than a celebration of chocolate, from its Aztec origins and arrival in Europe 500 years ago to the modern-day production process.

It explains the role of the Quaker Cadbury family in making chocolate affordable to ordinary people, and also their philanthropic and enlightened attitude towards their own workers, building a garden village called Bourneville where workers could live in decent conditions.

Cadbury World is also fun as well as informative, with Jorvik-style rides, lots of animatronic characters... and lots of chocolate, with bars of the stuff handed out to visitors at various points along the tour.

Cadbury invested £6 million to set up the centre, and another £6 million has since been spent on various improvements. It provides employment for about a hundred people, and it attracts more than half a million visitors every year.

Mark Ansell, chief executive of Marketing Birmingham, says it is an important component of the city's tourism offer, with the majority of people who visit it also going on to visit other areas of Birmingham.

Visitor Steve Groome, from the London area, told me he had enjoyed visiting the centre with his wife Samantha and five-year-old son Connor. He also said they had been to York in the past, visiting attractions such as Jorvik, but had not seen anything about chocolate.

If York had something like Cadbury World, it would be an incentive to pay another visit. "It would be an added attraction," said Steve.

But York, a city where thousands of jobs depend on its success as a tourism destination, has so far failed to capitalise fully on its chocolate-making tradition. While its historic links with the railways are successfully celebrated by the National Railway Museum, and its Viking history is well served by Jorvik, it virtually ignores what could be another major asset.

It could have been a very different story. Back in the late 1980s, the old Rowntree Mackintosh company planned to open a Chocolate Experience museum at Rowntree Wharf in the centre of York. But the £500,000 scheme was abandoned following Rowntree's takeover by Nestl, allowing Birmingham to steal a march on York.

But following the confirmation that Terry's chocolate factory is to close with the loss of more than 300 jobs, is it not now time to revisit such an idea?

Kraft said in its closure statement that it wanted to work with City of York Council to establish the most appropriate future for the factory site in Bishopthorpe Road, and also to explore ways of preserving Terry's heritage and its connection with the city.

So how about making part of the site available for transformation into, say, The York World of Chocolate? Or Chocolate Heaven?

It could tell the long and proud story of Terry's, and promote famous products such as Chocolate Orange, which Kraft will still want to sell in Britain. And if York's other great chocolate manufacturer agreed to become involved, it might be an opportunity to promote some of its own big household name products, from Smarties to KitKats.

Such a centre could also tell the fascinating story of the Rowntree family - who, like the Cadburys were Quakers determined to provide decent working conditions and built their own model village for the workers, New Earswick, - and of the continuing work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

But it would also need to be fun, if it was going to attract big numbers of visitors. An attention-grabbing theme would be useful. Nestl already makes some Willy Wonka products, and the Rowntree factory may be used in the making of a new Wonka film starring Johnny Depp. So how about opening Willy Wonka's World of Chocolate?

Imagine the pester power of millions of children all over Britain after seeing something like this featured on Blue Peter or Newsround: "Pleeeaaaase, Dad! Can't we go there?" What a shot in the arm this could provide for tourism across the whole city.

The marketing potential would be immense. Golden tickets, rather like the ones in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and giving winning families admission to the centre, could be offered as prizes in national competitions.

This is all ambitious stuff, I know. And hugely expensive. And maybe impractical.

One could imagine two of the world's major confectioners having problems working together on a project like this. But surely it would be worth at least exploring the idea?

Let's do it... says Kay Hyde, of the York Tourism Bureau

THE Tourism Bureau was bitterly disappointed by the decision to close Terry's factory.

However, now the decision has been made we feel a chocolate attraction in York would be a heaven sent gift for the city's tourism industry.

We haven't been able to fully capitalise on York's tradition of chocolate making because if we write about it the next thing the visitor wants to know is "what can I visit?"

Almost everybody likes chocolate and the draw for visitors would be immense.

Having a chocolate attraction in York makes perfect sense - we have the history and the heritage to make it a huge success.

It is this authenticity which makes Jorvik and the National Railway Museum so successful - we are a Viking city, a railway heritage city and we could be recognised as the "Chocolate city" if this scheme were to go ahead.

At the moment there's little awareness outside of York that chocolate has been made here for centuries.

A chocolate attraction would change that, it would lever huge media coverage for York and it would bring in additional visitors in their thousands, not forgetting of course providing much-needed local job opportunities.

Updated: 09:07 Thursday, July 01, 2004