Preston is the fourth biggest chocolate loving place in the UK according to a recent study

With Easter just around the corner, new research has revealed that Preston residents have some of the sweetest teeth in the country.

Birds Bakery, a sweet and savoury treat specialist, analysed Google searches for chocolate related terms, such as “Easter eggs”, “chocolate recipes” and “chocolate bars”, across a number of UK towns and cities in 2022, and compared it to the population data, to establish the top 20 most chocoholic places.

Preston featured fourth in the national rankings, with a population of 143,135 making 136220 searches for chocolate terms in 2022, this meant the average Prestonian has googled for chocolate 0.95 times so far this year.

In top chocoholic position was Cambridge where the average person googled for chocolate 1.19 times, whilst Lincoln and Watford finished off the top three, with 1.18 and 1.06 searches per person respectively.

In fact, Preston was the only northern location to make the top 10, as it was followed by Worcester (0.94), Ipswich (0.92), Stevenage (0.91), Cheltenham (0.89), Norwhich (0.88) and Chesterfield (0.87).

The only other northern city which made the list was York in 18th place, with the rest of the top 20 being made up of Exeter, Slough, Bristol, Oxford, Bedford, Mansfield, Eastbourne, York, Peterborough and Gloucester.

Commenting on the findings, Mike Holling, sales and marketing director at Birds Bakery, said: “Easter can mean lots of things to different people, such as seeing family and celebrating spring. At Birds, we love Belgian chocolate - and our specialist chocolate room in our factory is working around the clock to keep customers stocked up with our Easter range of bunnies, carrots, and lollipops.

“We were surprised to find that our home of Derby only came 30th in the rankings. But it’s also interesting to learn where in the UK has the biggest sweet tooth. We’ve recently expanded our postal service so we can reach everywhere in England, Scotland, and Wales, so as well as our 62 shops in the Midlands, chocolate lovers in Preston will be able to enjoy some of our handmade goodies.”

You can read the full research here.