In the first chapter, I open with an exploration of the Bournville Spirit, an energy created in house that manifested Cadbury’s core values and ambitions as both employer and manufacturer, and move on to trace synergies and differences between the firm’s factory site and other earlier and contemporaneous industrial communities, with a specific focus on the sites’ leisure provision and wider cultural offers. Brief considerations of earlier models – including New Lanark, Saltaire, and Bromborough Pool – are followed by more detailed explorations of Lever Brothers Wirral-based Port Sunlight factory, and Cadbury’s fellow cocoa and confectionery manufacturer and Quaker business operation, Rowntree’s, in York. Through these comparative industrial communities, the chapter acknowledges the wider contexts and industrial networks Bournville was located within and presents a case for the distinctiveness of Cadbury’s enterprise.