History
Abel Hoadley opened a jam factory in South Melbourne, in 1889, trading as A. Hoadley & Company. By 1895, business had expanded rapidly and Hoadley built a five-storey premises, the Rising Sun Preserving Works. He produced jams, jellies, fruit preserves, candied peels, sauces, and confectionery and employed a workforce as large as 200. By 1901, there were four preserving factories and a large confectionery works. Hoadley had acquired the firm of Dillon, Burrows & Co and extended his products to vinegar, cocoa, and chocolate. In 1910, the jam business was sold to Henry Jones Co-operative and in 1913, Hoadley's Chocolates was formed.
The same year, Hoadley produced his first chocolate assortment and packed them in a purple box decorated with violets, in tribute to his wife's favourite colour and flower. Within the box assortment was a piece of honeycomb that became so popular that Hoadley decided to produce an individual honeycomb bar.
This proved trickier than first thought because, as the pieces of honeycomb cooled, they absorbed moisture and started sticking together. This hygroscopic nature of honeycomb led Hoadley to eventually dip his bars in chocolate, to keep the honeycomb dry and crunchy, creating the Violet Crumble bar in 1913.
Hoadley wanted to call his new bar just Crumble, but as it was not possible to protect that name with a trademark he used his wife's favourite flower and registered the name Violet Crumble. It had a purple wrapper with a small flower logo. It was an instant success. Violet Crumbles are crispier in texture than Crunchie bars, with a slightly more marshmallow taste.
Hoadley's Chocolates was acquired by English company Rowntree's in 1970, which produced Violet Crumble in Adelaide until 1985.[2] Rowntree's was acquired in 1988 by Nestlé, which moved production to the northern Melbourne suburb of Campbellfield.
On 11 January 2018, Robern Menz purchased the Violet Crumble brand and its associated intellectual property, plant and equipment for an undisclosed sum,[3] and production restarted on 10 October 2018.[2]
Timeline
- 1913, Hoadley's Chocolates made the first Violet Crumble bar in Melbourne.
- 1972, Hoadley's Chocolates was acquired by Rowntree's and became known as Rowntree Hoadley Ltd.
- 1989, Nestlé acquired Rowntree's. The Rowntree chocolate brands were initially branded as Nestlé-Rowntree until Nestlé dropped "Rowntree".
- 2009, Nestlé changed the shape of the Violet Crumble to a wider, flatter bar. The honeycomb formulation was also changed to make it shatter into small pieces when bitten into.
- 2010, Nestlé included the popular Violet Crumble “bags” product (not the bars) on their list of deleted products[4]
- 2012, an attempt at regaining name and recipe rights for the Violet Crumble was made by young entrepreneur Bryan Hoadley, a descendant of Abel Hoadley.
- 2018, in January Robern Menz announced their plans to acquire the rights and equipment to take over production and commenced production in October.
- 2019, in March bags of Violet Crumble went on sale, for the first time in nine years, in independent grocery stores such as IGA.[5]
