Giles Naish says he doesn’t think chocolate is in the blood.

But when he went to interview for a job at the York confectionery factory that his great-grandfather Joseph Rowntree had helped set up, he admitted he felt a “really nice connection” to the past.

Seventeen years later, Giles is head of the confectionery innovation and renewal project at the company, which has been taken over by Nestle UK, and says some of his colleagues are just learning he is a direct descendant of Rowntree.

“When I was a kid, we would drive by the factory and my father would come over, where a lot of family members worked,” he says.

“I never expected to work here myself, but I am very proud of this association.”

Joseph Rowntree took over the confectionery company from his brother Henry in 1883.

The company, which was bought by Nestlé in 1988, is today best known for producing fruit pastries, Aero bars, Polo mints and Kit Kats – with the York factory producing more than four million bars of chocolate every day.

“My grandfather worked in advertising for Rowntree before the war,” says Giles, 47.

“I didn’t know much about Joseph, but now, looking back, I wish I had spoken to my grandfather more about him and his relationship with Joseph – it would be great to know more.”

Despite his business connections, Giles worked as a buyer for a large retailer before being approached by recruiters to apply for a job at Nestlé.

He says he did not reveal his family history to many of his colleagues.

“I grew up on a farm, a far cry from chocolate,” he says.

“It was always important for me to prove that I did it unintentionally, and there was no favoritism involved.

“I tend to keep it quite quiet.”

Giles says he’s proud to be working on some of the same sweets his great-grandfather was developing more than a century ago.

“Back in the 1890s, they were developing fruit pastes and fruit gums – and I still run projects working on those brands,” he says.

“I look out my office window and think that, more than 130 years ago, it overlooked the same site and confectionery factory.”