One Of The World's Best-Selling Coffee Brands And KitKat Are Owned By The Same Company

The Swiss company manages an astounding collection of over 2,000 labels, including both KitKat and the best-selling coffee brand Nescafé. Originally a condensed milk and baby milk company (which is a large part of its controversial past), the conglomeration now boasts a wildly diverse portfolio.

The through line? Products used globally, typically for day-to-day consumption. For well over a century, Nestlé has sold consumables across a wide-spanning region; the company boasted a continent-wide presence as early as 1905.

Throughout the first decades of the 20th century, condensed and powdered milk as well as chocolate drove sales. Nestlé launched Nescafé in 1938, debuting a standardized instant coffee powder, developed as a way to make use of Brazilian coffee surplus.

In only two years, the product was already distributed in over 30 countries. KitKat arrived under the Nestlé umbrella much later, in 1980, although the brand had worked on its own milk chocolate as early as 1904.

Today, Nestlé's reach extends far past coffee, milk, and chocolate; the company's behind frozen pizza brand DiGiorno, for example. Still, the Swiss company's speciality in the day-to-day joys of coffee and chocolate remains, making it a surprising corporate overlap.

Nestlé found worldwide success with KitKat, Nescafé, and many other brands Maybe you've enjoyed a Nescafé and a KitKat hand-in-hand, or saved them for separate occasions. What's incredible about Nestlé, though, is just how many people have consumed such products, too.

Before acquiring KitKat in 1980, the crunchy wafer bar was already a success. The inventor company, Rowntree's, found popularity in the United Kingdom and regional markets like Australia and Canada.

Yet Nestlé took production and distribution up a notch, scaling KitKat sales to over 100 countries. The company even helped the sweet achieve cult status in Japan, via the release of limited edition flavors.

And to this day, promotional ventures continue, with products like the KitKat McDonald's McFlurry continuing to popularize the sweet in both the U.S. and abroad. With Nescafé, Nestlé achieved an even broader world-spanning reach.

Available in more than 180 countries, the instant powder is among the globe's best-selling coffee brands. This convenient caffeine option is further supplemented by the Nespresso line, first released in 1986.

Nestlé savvily placed the coffee into single-use capsules, brewed at the press of a button via specialized machines. As yet another global phenomenon, it's a testament to how Nestlé operates on a scale like few others, in turn making Nescafé and KitKat such iconic products.