Biscuit Business

I shop at Safeway. I find the name reassuring. I have no idea what Coles is trying to say to their customers, there's nothing about their business name that makes me feel secure in my purchases. I would never shop at an IGA either. IGA could be an acronym for terrorist organisation for all I know. I don't want the direct consequences of my grocery purchases being an exploded bus on a busy Tel Aviv street. I just don't want that. That's why I shop at Safeway. It's a safe way to shop.

The other reason why I shop at Safeway is to be able to purchase the Safeway "Select" brand Honeycomb Crunch chocolate biscuits. These are my favourite chocolate biscuits. They are, according to the packaging, "Honeycomb flavoured biscuit with honeycomb nuggets and créme topping, covered in milk chocolate and yellow squiggles". An appetising proposition.


[I realise the packaging says Woolworths but I'd have to be subjected to a seriously intense session of waterboarding before I'd ever refer to the company as that]*

Now those more familiar with the the chocolate biscuit market will know that these biscuits were originally manufactured by Cadbury and were sold as Squiggly Tops. It seems at some period Cadbury sold their secret recipe to Safeway. Whether this was due to the biscuits not being profitable or someone in their upper-management just not liking the way they tasted one can't be sure. What one can be sure of is that regardless of Cadbury's abandonment of them, they remain a wonderfully tasty biscuit and fact that Cadbury decided to sell the biscuit to a different company seriously damages their credibility.

Back in the days when Cadbury were manufacturing these biscuits as Squiggly Tops they had another rather delectable chocolate biscuit in their range. These biscuits were known as Rainbows and they consisted of a crunchy chocolate base which had a solid chocolate topping containing the candy pieces known as "clinkers". This biscuit base and chocolate/clinker topping was then smothered in chocolate and had some pink squiggles on the top for decoration. At the time these biscuits were my favourites. Every Friday my Mum would buy me a random packet of chocolate biscuits from the supermarket and on my way home from school I would always hope that the biscuits she had bought this week would be Rainbows. Unfortunately, however, it seems that when Cadbury sold the secret recipe to Squiggly Tops over to Safeway, they did not sell the secret recipe to Rainbows with it. Nor did they decide to keep manufacturing the biscuit themselves.

Recently, however, Cadbury have gone some way to redeeming themselves with the release on the confectionery market of the Dairy Milk Clinkers block of chocolate. Whilst not having the biscuit base of the Rainbows chocolate biscuit, it does contain what many would consider the best part of the Rainbows in the clinker-filled solid milk chocolate. And therefore they provide either a substantially tasty treat for oneself, or the perfect small gift for a loved one and/or family member.


*For any non-Australians reading this; the company is called Safeway in Victoria and Woolworths in the uninhabitable states.