You’re undoubtedly familiar with the Kit Kat, the classic breaktime snack consisting of wafers and milk chocolate. You may have even noticed special editions such as mint + dark chocolate, birthday cake, and lemon crisp. However, the vast majority of Kit Kat bars that you’ve seen or eaten are simply milk chocolate.
It’s a completely different story in Japan, where the Kit Kat has become a cultural phenomenon and has even reached gourmet status. Since the Ki tKat first went on sale in Japan in 1973, over 300 flavors have been introduced. The long list of quirky tastes includes wasabi, matcha, sake, cherry blossom, soy sauce, ginger ale, Shinshu apple, adzuki bean, lemon vinegar, whole grain biscuit, Sachertorte, chestnut, purple sweet potato, Hokkaido melon with mascarpone cheese, milk tea, and many more.
Kit Kat’s popularity in Japan is connected to an accidental linguistic similarity between the chocolate bar’s name and the Japanese phrase kitto katsu, which means “to win” or “to succeed.” Unsurprisingly, this similarity was seized upon by Kit Kat’s Japanese marketing team, and soon the bars were being given as “good luck” gifts, especially for students sitting important exams. Japanese culture has long placed great importance on giving gifts, and this tradition coincided with Kit Kat’s efforts to make their confectionery products worthy of special gifting status. Plain milk chocolate in a standard red wrapper simply wouldn’t do.
Although Kit Kat bars had been available in Japan since 1973, beginning in the early 2000s, Kit Kat began introducing a huge number of novelty flavors, often coinciding with regional or seasonal produce, and sold in limited edition boxes. Japan has a very robust confectionery market that prizes novelty and choice, with around 2,000 new products introduced each year. Yet Kit Kat has flourished in this environment and now rivals traditional Japanese brands like Meiji for dominance in the confectionery industry.
Beyond the various mass-produced flavors, the most gourmet Kit Kats are reserved for Kit Kat Chocolatory concessions at high-end department stores, with some gift boxes available at airports and train stations. The renowned patissier Yasumasa Takagi has collaborated with Kit Kat on specialty, limited-edition flavors made with couverture chocolate.
Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar!
- Around 4 million Kit Kat minis are sold every day in Japan, amounting to around 1.5 billion per year. Worldwide, 17 billion Kit Kats are eaten annually.
- For a limited time in 2017, Tokyo’s Kit Kat Chocolatory shops made three types of Kit Kat chocolate bars that were inspired by sushi (although they didn’t actually taste like raw fish.)
- The Kit Kat was created in York, England, in the 1930s, and was produced by Rowntree’s until that brand was purchased by Nestle in the 1980s, leading to the chocolate bar’s introduction in markets all around the globe. In the United States, due to a previous licensing agreement with Rowntree’s, it is made by the Hershey Company.
