Mackintosh was the largest manufacturer of toffee in the world. The company introduced iconic brands such as Quality Street, Rolo and Toffee Crisp.
Violet Mackintosh creates a new toffee
John Mackintosh (1868 – 1920) and his wife Violet (1866 – 1932) opened a pastry shop in Halifax, Yorkshire, in 1890. The couple were lifelong members of the Methodist New Connexion denomination (United Methodist Church from 1907).
Business was to prove slow, so Violet Mackintosh invented a new product: a unique chewy toffee which blended the qualities of Yorkshire butterscotch and American caramel. Previously English toffee had referred to a hard boiled sweet.
The product was to prove a great success, and soon the product began to be distributed across Britain.
Mackintosh becomes the largest manufacturer of toffee in the world
John Mackintosh was the largest toffee manufacturer in the world by 1905. He sold an average of one hundred tons of toffee every week in England. He claimed to be the largest consumer of butter in the world.
Export sales proved promising, and Mackintosh established a factory in Germany, outside of Dusseldorf, from 1906.
A factory was opened at Brockville, Ontario in Canada in 1908. It had a manufacturing capacity of seven tons of toffee a day.
Over 8,000 tons of toffee were sold in Britain every year by 1910.
The German business was closed shortly before the First World War.
John Mackintosh Ltd employed some 1,000 people by 1914.
A factory had been established in Australia by 1914.
John Mackintosh died from a heart attack in 1920. He left an estate valued at over £150,000, and his company had assets of £350,000.
Control of the business passed to Harold Mackintosh (1891 – 1964), the eldest son of the founder.
Company shares were first offered to the public in 1921 in order to fund the duty on John Mackintosh’s estate.
Mackintosh could produce seven million pieces of toffee every day by 1921. The company employed 2,000 people in factories in Britain and overseas by 1932.
Acquisition of A J Caley and new product launches A J Caley, the Norwich chocolate manufacturer, was acquired from Unilever for £138,000 in 1933. The loss-making operation had a capital of £1 million and employed 1,000 people.
Mackintosh overhauled the business, repositioning it into the premium quality sector. Mackintosh combined its expertise in toffee with Caley’s expertise in chocolate. As a result, the Quality Street sweet tin was launched in 1936. This was quickly followed by the Rolo in 1937. The Rolo was designed to fit easily inside a pocket, and was an immediate success. A J Caley sales grew eightfold between 1933 and 1938.
Mackintosh supplied over 10,000 tons of confectionery to the British armed forces during the Second World War, principally toffee and butterscotch.
Quality Street had overtaken Mackintosh’s toffee to be regarded by the company as its premier product by the early 1950s. Rolo was perceived as an adequate rival to the foremost Cadbury and Rowntree lines.
Further product launches included Munchies (1957), Caramac (1959), Tooty Frooties and Toffee Crisp (both 1963) and Toffo (1964).
Mackintosh employed 5,000 people, including 2,000 at Norwich, by 1962. The company opened a new factory in Halifax, Yorkshire, in 1964.
Mackintosh became one of the “Big Five” of British chocolate manufacturers, alongside Cadbury, Rowntree, Mars and Nestle.
Fox’s of Leicester, manufacturer of Glacier Mints, was acquired for £1 million in cash in 1969.
Mackintosh merges with Rowntree
Mackintosh underwent a friendly merger with Rowntree of York to form Rowntree Mackintosh in 1969. At the time, Mackintosh shares were still majority held by family interests. Rowntree dominated the merger, which was seen as a defensive move following a £49 million bid for Rowntree from General Food of America. The merged company held 25 percent of the British confectionery market.
Quality Street had the largest sale of any confectionery assortment in the world by 1972.
Rowntree was acquired by Nestle of Switzerland in 1988. The Norwich factory was closed in 1994.
Toffo was discontinued in Britain in 2012. It continues to be manufactured and sold in the Middle East.
The Halifax factory continues to manufacture Quality Street, as well as Easter eggs and After Eights.
Mackintosh toffee is still sold in Canada and Australasia. It is also available in Britain as a variety within the Quality Street assortment.
Fox’s Glacier Mints are the leading mint-flavoured boiled sweets in Britain.
Walter Fox establishes the business
Walter Richard Fox (1862 – 1951) was born to a Baptist Leicestershire farming family. He built up a wholesale grocery business on York Road in Leicester.
Fox was an inventor, and began to manufacture confectionery from 1895. He was producing over 100 different lines by 1897.
Eric Fox joins the business and introduces Glacier Mints
Walter Fox was joined in business by his son, Eric Smart Fox (1890 – 1963), from 1914. Eric Fox had spent four years in the United States in order to learn American business methods and advertising techniques. Eric Fox became the driving force of the company, and persuaded his father to move away from low-cost sweets and produce premium-priced confectionery.
Eric Fox invented the Glacier Mint, which would on to become the leading product for the business, by mistake during the First World War. It was the first time a transparent peppermint sweet had been introduced. Wartime obstacles prevented Fox from installing the necessary machinery to mass produce the product. Clear Mint Fingers were finally introduced from 1918, and were sold in large glass jars. Acting on his wife’s advice, Fox renamed the sweets Glacier Mints from 1919, and introduced the polar bear trademark.
Eric Fox drove the growth of the company from a purely local business to a national concern. He believed in the potential for Glacier Mints, and advertised extensively in newspapers.
Expanding sales saw the business relocate to Oxford Street, Leicester from 1923. Production was increased eightfold. The export market began to be pursued from 1924.
Eric Fox would later relate that he had not set out to make a lot of money, but to serve the public with a quality product.
Walter Fox retired from the business in 1935.
A factory was established in Castlereagh, Belfast, from 1954. Around 200 people were employed.
Fox’s Glacier Fruits were introduced from 1956.
Eric Smart Fox died with an estate valued at £150,000 in 1963. He was succeeded as chairman by his son, Bruce Vaughan Fox (born 1918).
The Castlereagh plant was closed with the loss of around 100 jobs in 1964.
The Fox family sell the business; subsequent owners
Fox’s relocated to purpose-built premises at Braunstone, Leicester, from 1967. It was the most modern automated confectionery plant in Europe. The business employed around 400 people.
Fox’s had taken on debt in order to build the new factory, and consequently lacked sufficient capital for expansion. The company was acquired by Mackintosh & Son of Halifax for almost £1 million in cash (around £14 million in 2014) in 1969. It was reasoned that Mackintosh would be able to improve distribution of Fox’s products and increase exports. Mackintosh was acquired by Rowntree later that year.
The Leicester factory began to produce the fruit-flavoured variants of Rowntree’s Polo mint brand from the 1980s.
Rowntree was acquired by Nestle of Switzerland in 1988.
Declining sales meant that the future of the Leicester factory was in doubt by 2000. The business was saved when it was acquired by Northern Foods for £8.4 million in 2001. Nestle relocated production of the fruit-flavoured Polo mints to a factory in the Czech Republic. Northern Foods closed its Croydon confectionery factory, and relocated production of Paynes Poppets and Just Brazils brands to the Leicester site.
Fox’s was subject to a £9.4 million management buyout in 2003. Renamed as the Big Bear Group, the business acquired other brands such as Sugar Puffs cereal.
Big Bear was acquired by Raiso Group of Finland for £80 million in 2011. Raiso was best known for the Benecol health drink.
Fox’s employed around 150 people in 2014. Its leading brands were Glacier Mints, XXX strong mints, Payne’s Poppets and Just Brazils.
Big Bear Confectionery was sold to Valeo Foods in 2017.
The Leicester factory was closed in 2019 and production was transferred to York.
Bovril beef extract was introduced into Britain in 1886. The product was a great success, and the business grew to become one of the largest companies in Britain.
Background and introduction of Bovril
John Lawson Johnston (1839 – 1900) was an Edinburgh butcher with an interest in military and medical provisions. He developed Johnston’s Fluid Beef, a beef broth product, in the 1860s.
Johnston described his manufacturing process. He used steam to separate the albumin from the beef. The albumin was mixed with lean beef which had had all of its water, fat and gelatine removed. The mixture was then dried and ground to a fine powder. This powder was then added to beef extract to create Fluid Beef.
Johnston won a three-year contract to supply one million tin cans of Fluid Beef to the French army in 1874. He established operations in Canada in order to be closer to his source of beef.
A caricature of John Lawson Johnston (1839 – 1900) by Spy for Vanity Fair (1897)
Johnston began to produce a concentrated version of Fluid Beef, which enjoyed lower distribution costs, from 1875.
The Canadian operations were destroyed by fire in 1884. Johnston returned to Britain, “intending to do nothing. But before long I found idleness too hard work”. Johnston discovered a new way to make albumin soluble which created an improved beef extract he called Bovril. He established a modest factory at Trinity Square, London with a staff of two people, and introduced Bovril to Britain in 1886. Johnston was inspired whilst smoking a cigar to name the product by combining the Latin “bo” meaning ox, with “vril”, the mysterious life-force in the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race (1871).
The classic bulbous brown Bovril bottles were introduced from 1888, by which time the product was distributed throughout 3,000 pubs and shops.
Bovril enters into mass production
The Bovril company was registered with a capital of £150,000 in 1889. Anew factory was established at Old Street, London.
Virol malt tonic was introduced from 1889, followed by Stelna corned beef.
Beef began to be sourced from Argentina and Uruguay from 1890.
Bovril was one of the first consumer goods to be advertised on a large scale. Advertising focused on its healthful properties. Pope Leo XIII (1810 – 1903) endorsed the product in advertisements, as he did for coca wine (a predecessor of Coca-Cola). An electric sign advertising Bovril was erected at Ludgate Circus, London from 1892.
The London factory employed over 200 people by 1896.
The Bovril advertisement on Ludgate Circus, London (1918)
The lightweight and nutritious properties of Bovril led to it being taken on expeditions by the likes of Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. Edmund Hillary brought it with him on the Everest Expedition.
Bovril flotation
The Bovril company was sold to the financier E T Hooley (1842 – 1903) for £2 million in 1896. Johnston had privately believed that even £1.5 million would be a ridiculous price to pay for the business.
Hooley floated the company for £2.5 million, but stripped the business of its working capital, and promised higher dividends than the company could afford. Hooley walked away with his profit, but Johnston, who remained as chairman, was forced to loan the company £150,000 just to keep it afloat.
Bovril was available in over 100,000 retail establishments by 1896, as well as most hospitals and infirmaries.
George Lawson Johnston takes over as chairman
John Lawson Johnston died in 1900, and was succeeded by his son George Lawson Johnston (1873 – 1943) as chairman of Bovril.
Bovril was ranked as the 35th largest British company as measured by share capital in 1905.
George Lawson Johnston (1873 – 1943) in 1940.
Bovril’s principal meat supplier entered into an exclusive contract with Liebig’s, its main rival, in 1906. In order to ensure supply, Bovril acquired half a million acres of land in Argentina in 1908. Beef also continued to be sourced from Australia and New Zealand.
Bovril was a major supplier to the British armed forces during the First World War. The company earned the goodwill of the British public by its refusal to increase the price of its product during the conflict.
Bovril acquired Marmite of Burton-upon-Trent and Ambrosia, a Devon-based producer of milk-based desserts, in 1924.
The Old Street factory was capable of producing 57,600 bottles of Bovril every day by 1927.
Bovril, with 310,000 cattle, had the largest herd under single ownership in Argentina by 1930. The company owned 1.3 million acres in Argentina and nine million acres in Australia.
20 to 30 pounds of good quality, lean beef were used to make one pound of Bovril.
Bovril had a market value of £10.8 million by 1930, making it the 23rd most highly-valued company in Britain.
According to a profile of Bovril for TIME magazine in 1932:
a meeting of the Bovril directorate would resemble a meeting of the British Cabinet, were it not for the fact that the Bovril board has the honor of including a member of the royal family (addicted to Bovril since Edward VII) but whose name is discreetly withheld.
Stelna had been rebranded as Bovril corned beef by 1936.
Ambrosia Creamed Rice was introduced in 1936.
The Old Street factory was hit three times during the Blitz, but a total of only four working days were lost.
Post-war period
The Argentina cattle were descended from Bovril-bred pedigree bulls from Ampthill in Bedfordshire. The Santa Elena abattoir employed 3,000 skilled workers, and was one of the most modern factories in Argentina.
An advertisement from the early 1900s. Bovril had Papal approval
Bovril, Ambrosia creamed rice and Bovril corned beef were all market leaders in Britain by 1957.
The Old Street factory broke a new record when 131,868 bottles of Bovril were produced in a single day in 1961. Production volumes of Bovril began to decline from the mid-1960s.
Bovril instant beef stock was launched in 1966. The Ambrosia purchase brought with it dairies, and Bovril processed 42 million gallons of milk in 1966.
Production of Bovril was relocated from Old Street to Burton-upon-Trent, in the English Midlands, from 1967.
Acquisition by Cavenham Foods
Bovril was acquired by Cavenham Foods, controlled by James Goldsmith (1933 – 1997) for £14.5 million in 1971. Goldsmith had identified the Bovril management, led by Lord Luke (1905 – 1996), as clueless.
Bovril’s dairy interests, including three dairies in Devon and two in Ireland, were sold six weeks later to Grand Metropolitan for £6.3 million. The Bovril Argentinian interests were divested for £3 million in 1973.
Cavenham focused on marketing the three principal brands: Bovril, Marmite and Ambrosia.
Bovril advertisement c.1900
Subsequent ownership
Bovril (including Marmite and Ambrosia) was sold to Beecham, a drugs and consumer goods company, for £42 million in cash in 1980. Bovril employed 1,400 people in Britain across sites in Burton-upon-Trent and Devon. Beecham planned to use its international marketing expertise to increase sales worldwide.
Following a merger with SmithKline Beckman, Beecham decided to focus on its pharmaceuticals business, and sold Bovril (including Marmite and Ambrosia) to CPC, an American food company which owned Hellman’s mayonnaise and Knorr, for £157 million in cash in 1990. The number of employees had halved to 700 since 1980.
Ten million jars of Bovril were sold in 1994. Production had halved by 1998.
CPC (now renamed Best Foods) was acquired by Unilever in 2001. Unilever sold Ambrosia to Premier Foods for £105 million in 2003.
In the wake of an European Community ban on the export of British beef, Unilever changed the composition of Bovril from beef stock to yeast extract from 2004. The ban was lifted in 2006, and Bovril began to be made from beef again.
3.5 million jars of Bovril were consumed in Britain in 2009. Bovril also has a large export market in Malaysia, Singapore and China.
The protein content of Bovril was increased by 15 percent in 2017.
Crosse & Blackwell grew to become one of the largest food manufacturers in the world. It remains best known for tinned soup in Britain, English-style condiments in America and mayonnaise in South Africa.
Origins of the business
West & Wyatt was established in London in 1706. The firm had a sizable trade in salted fish and held Royal Warrants to supply George III, George IV and William IV.
Edmund Crosse (1804 – 1862) and Thomas Blackwell (1804 – 1879) joined West & Wyatt as apprentices in 1819, and became firm friends. Richard West died in 1824 and William Wyatt retired in 1830. Crosse and Blackwell borrowed £600 and acquired the business. Supposedly, Crosse sourced the ingredients and Blackwell created the recipes. Early products included fish sauce and Soho sauce, an accompaniment to game.
Relocation to Soho Square; mass production begins
Crosse & Blackwell received a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria in 1837. The business grew to employ 21 people. The expanding business relocated from 11 King Street (now Shaftesbury Avenue) to 21 Soho Square in 1839.
Crosse & Blackwell became the first business in the world to mass produce jam from 1841.
Crosse & Blackwell had a capital of £26,000 in 1844. The business had a particularly successful export trade, and produced 75 different sauces and pickles and 25 varieties of soup, as well as potted meats, jams and honey. Preserved foods were luxury items, aimed at the wealthy.
Crosse & Blackwell opened the first large-scale salmon cannery in the world in Cork, Ireland, in 1849.
Crosse & Blackwell grew due to a rise in luxury food sales, and a steadfast dedication to quality. Standards of freshness and cleanliness were paramount.
Crosse & Blackwell employed 126 people in 1851.
A second Soho Square building was acquired in 1857.
Mushroom ketchup ranked as the firm’s most popular sauce in 1857, with 77,000 litres sold that year. 120,000 tins of sardines were sold in 1859, and 300 tons of sugar were used in jam-making.
Crosse & Blackwell was the leading preserved goods producer in the world by 1860. Nearly one million jars of pickles were produced every year, using over 100,000 gallons of vinegar. 249 people were regularly employed, with hundreds more employed as seasonal workers. A contractor in East Ham employed 400 women to pick and prepare 12,000 bushels of onions every year.
Edmund Crosse died with an estate valued at £140,000 in 1862.
Edmund Meredith Crosse (1846 – 1918) and Thomas Francis Blackwell (1838 – 1907) followed their fathers into the business.
Crosse & Blackwell operated 38,000 square feet of factory and warehouse space in the Soho Square area by 1865. Nearly 400 people were employed.
British trading links with India saw the introduction of products with an Eastern influence such as Major Grey’s Chutney, Colonel Skinner’s Mango Relish and Captain White’s Oriental Pickle.
By 1867 the business used one ton of sugar daily, and annually 240,000 gallons of vinegar. 450 tons of fruit were preserved. 200,000 gallons of pickles were produced.
Continued expansion resulted in premises at Soho Square, Sutton Place, George Yard, Denmark Street, Stacey Street, Dean Street and Earl Street by 1868.
The business was awarded warrants from Emperor Napoleon III of France and the King of Belgium in 1868.
Crosse & Blackwell sold two million bottles of pickles and 800,000 tins of sardines in 1869. The firm imported nearly half a million tins of lobster into England in 1871. The business employed up to 1,000 people during peak periods.
Thomas Francis Blackwell becomes senior partner
Thomas Blackwell Sr died in 1879 with an estate valued at under £160,000. T F Blackwell succeeded his father as senior partner.
Thomas F Blackwell (1838 – 1907), date unknown
In 1880 around 1,200 people were regularly employed, around 400 to 500 of which were women. That year, 20,000 bushels of onions were pickled. The firm’s brewery produced 500,000 gallons of vinegar each year. 60,000 bottles of pickles were produced every week. Over one million tins of soup were sold annually; turtle, mock turtle and oxtail were among the most popular variants.
Crosse & Blackwell was the largest jam manufacturer in England, using around 3,000 tons of sugar a year by the late 1880s. The firm commenced exports of jam to the United States, despite a 30 percent import tariff.
Crosse & Blackwell was described as “probably the largest employer of labour in London” in 1887.
Crosse & Blackwell became a limited liability company with a capital of £570,000 in 1892. T F Blackwell was appointed company chairman. About one million gallons of vinegar were produced every year.
Crosse & Blackwell was one of the largest food manufacturers in the world by 1898. The company employed around 2,000 people, mostly unskilled labourers. There were factories at Soho Square; Charing Cross Road; Soho Wharf in Lambeth, Victoria Wharf at Millwall, a vinegar brewery on the Caledonian Road, a lemon squeezing factory at Vauxhall and a branch factory in Cork, Ireland.
T F Blackwell died in 1907, leaving an estate of £979,659 (£103 million in 2013). He was regarded as one of the merchant princes of British business; a strong man with high integrity. He continued to work at the company until a few days before his death.
By this time Crosse & Blackwell had established a number of employee benefits, including a savings bank with superior interest rates as well as athletic and recreational clubs.
Brand’s A1 became the highest-selling brown sauce in the world. Brand’s Essence of Chicken is a popular health supplement in Asia.
Henderson William Brand
Henderson William Brand (1805 – 1893) was born in Durham, North East England, the son of Thomas Brand, an innkeeper and brewer.
Henderson Brand probably worked in his father’s kitchen, and it is likely that he possessed a precocious culinary talent, as by the age of twelve he was employed in the kitchen of the Prince Regent (1762 – 1830) as “under cook”.
A bottle of A1 sauce, manufactured in Britain for export to Singapore (2018)
The Prince Regent was a confirmed gastronome who had previously employed Marie-Antoine Careme (1784 – 1833), the founder of modern haute cuisine, and one of the greatest chefs of his era. Brand thus had an excellent opportunity to develop his culinary repertoire in one of the greatest kitchens in Europe.
The Prince Regent became King George IV from 1820. Brand was promoted to “Yeoman of the Mouth”, a position akin to that of sous chef, from 1822.
Brand was appointed head chef to Thomas William Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (1754 – 1842) from 1826. Coke was a charismatic man, and regularly held large dinner parties to discuss his agricultural improvements. His magnificently-equipped kitchen at Holkham Hall in Norfolk boasted a fireplace large enough to roast an ox.
Brand published an updated version of Simpson’s Cookery, a popular cookbook, in 1834.
Brand established a factory/shop on 11 Little Stanhope Street in Mayfair, London from 1835. His first product was Essence of Chicken, using a recipe he had allegedly developed for the convalescent king. Effectively a concentrated consomme, it was made by heating chopped meat inside a pot, and then separating the fibre and fat to leave a clear amber “liquid essence”. It was recommended as a substitute for brandy in relieving exhaustion and nervous ailments.
Shortly afterwards, Brand introduced Essence of Beef at the request of a Dr Druitt.
Brand was a skilled chef, but perhaps a lacklustre businessman, and he was declared bankrupt in 1843. Brand & Co was acquired by a Mr Withall.
H.W. Brand
Henderson Brand re-emerged from 1858, trading as “H.W. Brand”. He was appointed Cook and Co-Manager of the Cuisine at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. It was at the Exhibition that he first introduced “Brand’s International Sauce”. It contained vinegar, Eastern spices, and dried fruits including raisins, sultanas, dates, oranges and tomatoes. At the Exhibition it was ranked “A1”, and thus became known by this name.
A1 sauce was soon introduced to the general public, and was an immediate success. It was distributed by the great food wholesalers of the period, including Crosse & Blackwell, J T Morton, E Lazenby & Son, and Batty & Co. By 1865 it was in use by the Royal household, and available at the dining rooms of the House of Lords and House of Commons.
Dence & Mason take over Brand & Co
Thomas Dence (1840 – 1918) acquired Brand & Co from Mr Withall for £5,000 in 1873. Dence was born in London to a Kentish grocer.
Thomas Dence (1840 – 1918) in 1904
Dence was joined in partnership by John James Mason (1833 – 1896), who managed the business. Mason was to prove instrumental in improving the range of foods for convalescents at Brand & Co.
Brand & Co had acquired H.W. Brand, including the rights to A1 sauce, by 1886.
Increasing sales saw a new site established at Vauxhall from 1887. There were two facilities; a meat processing plant and a sauce factory. The meat plant was described as the largest kitchen in Britain. Production was also expanded into soups and meat pastes.
Meanwhile, Henderson William Brand died in 1893 as a sadly forgotten figure who received no newspaper obituaries.
Sales of A1 sauce were such that Brand & Co struggled to meet demand, and so the business never actively sought out export markets. Gilbert Heublein (1849 – 1937), a German-born spirits distributor resident in Connecticut, was impressed by A1 sauce following a visit to England. After much effort he acquired the exclusive United States distribution rights to A1 sauce from 1894.
A Heublein advertisement in 1895 claimed that A1 held over 50 percent of the British bottled sauce market. It was described as a milder version of Worcestershire sauce.
John James Mason died with an estate valued at £151,811 in 1896.
Brand & Co products received royal warrants from Edward VII, the Tsarina of Russia and the Empress of Germany.
Brand & Co had entered into relative decline by the turn of the twentieth century. Its meat extracts had fallen behind competitors such as Bovril, Liebig’s and Armour’s. The business lacked focus, energy and drive.
Brand & Co employed 200 people by 1906. The business processed about six tons of meat every day. Staff were provided with a canteen, smoking room and club room.
Brand & Co is registered as a company
Brand & Co was registered as a private limited company in 1907. The company continued to be managed by the children, and later grandchildren, of Mason and Dence.
Brand & Co struggled to meet increasing consumer demand, and Heublein established a factory to produce A1 sauce in Connecticut from 1916.
Thomas Dence died as a highly wealthy man in 1918, with an estate valued at over £917,672. He was succeeded as chairman of Brand & Co by his son, Alexander Henry Dence (1876 – 1949).
Brand’s Essence of Chicken had been introduced to Singapore by the early 1930s.
A1 sauce had been established as one of the leading condiments in the United States by the 1930s.
Brand’s Essence of Chicken (2015)
Colin Sturtevant Dence (1907 – 1996) had been appointed managing director of Brand & Co by 1939.
The Vauxhall works were hit by a German bomb during the London Blitz in 1940. Four staff members were killed.
Heublein claimed that A1 was the highest-selling thick sauce in the world by 1948.
Brand & Co became a public company from 1949. The business employed 650 people, and the Vauxhall site occupied 2.5 acres. Brand’s Essence and A1 sauce remained the principal products, and exports accounted for 26 percent of production.
Brand & Co received a Royal Warrant to supply A1 sauce to George VI.
A1 sauce sold in Canada in 1956 listed its ingredients as tomato puree, orange marmalade, raisins, onions, garlic, malt vinegar, sugar, salt, tragacanth (an emulsifier and thickening agent), spices and flavourings.
Brand & Co is acquired by Cerebos
Brand & Co was acquired by Cerebos for £4.5 million in 1959. Cerebos produced a range of well-known packaged food brands including Bisto, Saxa salt, Paxo and Scott’s Porage Oats.
Sales of Brand’s Essence of Chicken had been successfully established in Asia by 1961. The product was highly-popular as a health supplement amongst the ethnic Chinese of Malaysia and Singapore. A semi-luxury product, it enjoyed high margins.
Cerebos began to manufacture A1 sauce in Canada from 1962, and in South Africa from 1963.
The Vauxhall factory was closed in 1967, and the valuable site was sold for £900,000. Keybridge House now stands in its place. Brand & Co production was relocated to the Cerebos plant in Greatham, County Durham. Sales of Brand’s tinned soups were growing, and the Greatham site offered ample space for expansion.
Cerebos was acquired by Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM) for £61 million in 1968. That same year, Brand & Co won a Queen’s Award for Industry for export achievement.
An American bottle of A1 sauce (2016)
Southeast Asia was the largest market for Brand & Co by the early 1970s, led by sales of Chicken Essence. Factories were established in Singapore and Malaysia at this time. Significant amounts of A1 sauce were exported to Okinawa in Japan.
After suffering considerable profit losses, production of soups and Brand’s meat pastes were discontinued in 1977. A1 sauce also ceased to be distributed in Britain from around this time.
Production of Brand’s Essence ended in Greatham in 1978-9. The factory machinery was transferred to Indonesia, where the product enjoyed a large market.
84 percent of RHM’s Asian profits came from Brand’s Essence of Chicken by the mid-1980s. Brand’s Essence of Chicken held a two third share of its category in the Asia Pacific region. Over four million bottles of Brand’s Essence of Chicken were sold in Singapore in 1985.
Present day
Brand’s Essence of Chicken remains popular in Asia, with reported sales of around £330 million in 2018. A1 sauce is widely sold across North America, where it is manufactured by Kraft. Premier Foods, the successor to RHM, still export A1 sauce from Britain to Asian and European markets.
A1 sauce recipe divergence
As previously mentioned, the original A1 sauce contained vinegar, Eastern spices, and dried fruits including raisins, sultanas, dates, oranges and tomatoes. The English and American A1 sauces have diverged over the years, and neither remains true to the original recipe. The English version no longer contains oranges, raisins or sultanas, whilst the North American versions have removed the dates.
A1 sauce from Britain contains tomatoes, malt vinegar, spirit vinegar, sugar, dates, salt, carob gum (a thickening agent), ginger, caramel colouring, onion powder, nutmeg, black pepper and cayenne pepper.
A1 sauce in the United States contains tomato puree, spirit vinegar, corn syrup, salt, raisin paste, crushed orange puree, mixed spices, garlic powder, caramel colouring, onion powder, potassium sorbate (a preservative), xanthan gum (a thickening agent) and celery seeds.
A1 sauce for the Canadian market is made from malt vinegar, spirit vinegar, tomato puree, sugar, modified cornstarch (a thickening agent), salt, orange juice concentrate, raisin juice concentrate, black treacle, spices, caramel colouring, citric acid and beet powder.
The leading brown sauce in Britain is HP. The leading brown sauce in the US is A1.
Broadly speaking, A1 is a cross between HP Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce. HP is sharper and thicker, whereas A1 is a little more fruity. You can find the imported American sauce in larger Tesco supermarkets in the UK. It pairs well with beef, especially in casseroles and meatloaf.
A1 is a British invention, introduced by Henderson William Brand in 1862, when he was co-manager of the cuisine at the International Exhibition in Hyde Park. He submitted the sauce before the Royal Commission for use in the Exhibition’s restaurants. The Chief Commissioner reportedly declared the sauce to be “A.1.”
Gilbert Heublein (1849 – 1937), a German-born spirits distributor resident in Connecticut, visited England and encountered A1 sauce. He was impressed, and after much effort he acquired the exclusive US distribution rights to A1 sauce from 1894. He gained the US production rights from 1916.
A1 was phased out in Britain in the 1970s, forced out of a crowded brown sauce market which included HP, Daddies and supermarket own-label nationally, as well as OK, Heinz Ideal, Hammonds and Fletcher’s Tiger Sauce at a regional level.
The brand is currently owned by Kraft in the US. In Britain, the trademark is currently owned by Premier Foods.
How did J Lyons become the largest catering business in the world within 30 years?
J Lyons is established, and the first tea rooms are opened
Barnett Salmon (1829 – 1897) and Isidore Gluckstein (1851 – 1920) established a successful chain of tobacconists.
Montagu Gluckstein (1854 – 1922), a salesman for the firm, lamented the poor state of catering at trade exhibitions. He suggested that the public could be provided with a better offer than beer and sandwiches. Gluckstein and Alfred Salmon partnered with Joseph Lyons, a distant relative, to form J Lyons & Co with a capital of £5,000. J Lyons & Co successfully provided catering for the Newcastle Exhibition of 1887. Contracts for other exhibitions soon followed.
J Lyons & Co was established as a public company with a capital of £120,000 in 1894. The original stakeholders were Montagu Gluckstein, his brother Isidore Gluckstein, brother-in-law Barnett Salmon (maternal grandfather to Nigella Lawson) and Joseph Lyons. Montagu Gluckstein was the de facto chairman of the business.
The first Lyons tea shop opened in September 1894 at 213 Piccadilly. It had 200 seats and a £30,000 lease. After a year the shop had made a profit of £11,400, and the company was able to pay a dividend of ten percent.
The first Lyons Tea Room was sited at 213 Piccadilly
The early tea room exteriors were enticing and extrovert, and the interiors were often glamorous, and intended to evoke the great Victorian exhibitions and Parisian cafes.
The Lyons tea shop girls went on strike in protest against low wages in 1895.
J Lyons establishes Cadby Hall
Cadby Hall was opened in Hammersmith to centrally produce baked goods for the company’s 17 tea shops from 1896. There were 37 tea shops in London by 1900, and expansion had begun in the provinces, with six branches in Manchester, four in Liverpool, and two in both Leeds and Sheffield.
Quality was good and prices were reasonable. The tea rooms were particularly popular throughout the daytime with lower middle class office workers. Cinema and theatre-goers patronised the chain on an evening.
The first Lyons Corner House was opened on Coventry Street in 1909. The Corner Houses were much larger than the tea rooms, with a greater appeal to the middle classes. Live bands and an informal atmosphere helped to cement their popularity. The Coventry Street outlet became the Lyons flagship outlet, and seated 2,000 diners on multiple floors. It was the largest restaurant in the world. A second Corner House, capable of seating 1,200 diners, was opened at the Strand in 1915.
J Lyons was one of the largest caterers in the world by 1911. Half a million meals were served every day through 200 shops and restaurants. The company employed over 12,000 people, including 2,000 people at Cadby Hall. The Cadby Hall works covered ten acres and included sixteen bakehouses, five cold storage rooms and three butchers’ shops.
20,000 people were employed by 1913. J Lyons was the largest baker in London, the largest tea merchant in the world and the largest restaurant operator in the world.
J Lyons dismissed all naturalised German and Austrian employees from its staff in 1914.
J Lyons also expanded into hotels, building the Regent Palace Hotel in London at a cost of £600,000. Opened in 1915, it was the largest hotel in Europe, with 1,028 bedrooms.
Lyons tea was far and away the market leader by 1915: five million packets were sold every week by 160,000 shopkeepers. The company accounted for one in four cups of tea sold in London.
Lyons had a capital of over £2 million by 1917.
Tea, coffee, bread, cakes, ice cream and groceries which had originally been produced for the tea rooms began to be sold directly to the customer, all manufactured at the company’s Hammersmith site.
In 1918 Lyons acquired two leading packet tea companies, positioned second and fourth place in the market respectively: Horniman of London and Black & Green of Manchester. The acquisitions were intended to increase Lyons’s market share in the North of England: Horniman was strong in Yorkshire and G&B strong in the North West.
The company had a share capital of £3.5 million by 1919. By this time Lyons was likely the largest catering company in the British Empire. There were 182 tea shops by 1919, making it easily the largest chain of its kind in the country.
Largest caterer in the world; Greenford plant is established
Cadby Hall was struggling to meet demand by 1919, so Lyons acquired a 30-acre freehold manufacturing site at Greenford, on the outskirts of London. Lyons opened the largest tea packing plant in the world there in 1920. Coffee, cocoa and confectionery production were also transferred to Greenford. It was the sixth largest manufacturing site in Britain.
J Lyons was the largest catering business in the world by 1921. Cadby Hall boasted the largest bakery in the world.
The Trocadero Restaurant was acquired in 1921.
There were over 22,000 employees by 1922. There were 160 Lyons tea shops in London, and a further 50 throughout Britain.
It was calculated that seven million people drank Lyons tea each week in 1922.
Lyons began construction on the Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch, the largest hotel in Europe, in 1922. It had 1,500 rooms and a Corner House.
The Coventry Street Corner House was extended in 1923 to create what was likely the largest restaurant in the world, with seats for 4,500 diners. It also boasted the largest chocolate shop in the world. It was open 24 hours a day.
An interior view of the Lyons Corner House on Coventry Street in 1942
Ice cream manufacture at Cadby Hall had reached the mass production scale by 1923.
Lyons was the 20th largest company in Britain by 1930, with a market value of £12.1 million and 30,000 employees. It was the largest catering company in the world. Over ten million meals were sold each week. Lyons held 14 percent of the packet tea market, with over 1.25 million packets sold every day. 600,000 Swiss rolls were sold every week.
The teashop chain continued to grow strongly until the onset of the Great Depression. Teashop losses between 1934 and 1938 totalled £374,000. Despite this, due to its manufacturing and hotel concerns, the company remained the largest catering company in the world in the latter half of the 1930s.
Lyons directly employed over 42,000 people by 1937.
Lyons produced 3.5 million gallons of ice cream in 1939.
Lyons had 253 tea rooms by 1939. Due to wartime labour shortages, self service was introduced to the tea rooms from 1941, and rolled-out across the chain from 1945.
Viennetta is produced at the Wall’s factory in Gloucester. Wall’s is owned by Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant. Unilever is the largest producer of ice cream in the world, and also manufactures the Magnum, Solero and Ben & Jerry’s brands.
Sales of Viennetta totalled £328 million worldwide in 2013, according to Euromonitor.
Viennetta is an ice cream imitation of the French millefeuille cake. Unilever saved money by adapting the product from a Belgian Cornetto recipe. The packaging was based on a German Christmas log manufactured by Langnese, another Unilever subsidiary. There are no imitations of Viennetta because the process by which it is produced is protected by patent.
A French millefeuille cake
Viennetta was introduced from 1982. It was originally sold only in the United Kingdom, and was a Christmas-only special. The launch was successful, and Viennetta was introduced as a year-round product from 1984. Such was its popularity that Unilever did not have to lobby supermarkets to stock the product, but instead the supermarkets lobbied them. Unilever was consequently able to achieve excellent margins on the product, which the supermarkets often sold as a loss-leader.
According to Professor Geoffrey Jones, Viennetta introduced the concept of the branded ice cream dessert. For the first time, ice cream was the main item of a dessert, and not just an accompaniment to something else on the bowl or plate.
Perhaps the product’s vaguely European-sounding name was considered sophisticated in the early 1980s. Viennetta’s star may be rising worldwide, but it has a reduced presence in its native UK. In 2014 value sales were far below what they were in 1990, not even accounting for inflation.
Bakers Oven was the largest bakery chain in Britain.
Greggs is a fast food chain with more outlets in Britain than McDonald’s. Specialising in value and convenience, outlets sell sandwiches, but remain best known for “treat” food: sausage rolls, pasties, vanilla slices etc.
Greggs’ dominance in the UK was established when it acquired Bakers Oven, its major rival bakery chain, in 1994. Bakers Oven was about 20 percent more expensive than Greggs, had more of a focus on in-store “baking” and typically offered substantial seating, which Greggs usually lacked.
Bakers Oven
Bakers Oven was a concept developed in 1976 by one of the largest British bread makers, Allied Bakeries. Allied Bakeries also owned other bakery chain fascias, with names such as City Bakeries, Martins and Strathdee, and boasted of operating a store on almost every British high street. ABF owned many prime high street sites; a legacy of local bakery chain acquisitions. They had first attempted to create a nationwide bakery chain in 1968 with the Lite Bite shops.
The claim that the first Bakers Oven was located in Barnard Castle, Durham is untrue. The location was previously operated by Carricks, a Newcastle upon Tyne bakery chain. and it was not rebranded to the Bakers Oven name until 1989.
Bakers Oven rode the rise in demand for healthier bread in the late 1980s, although it never matched the quality of genuine bakers’ produce. It became the largest bakery chain in the UK, however by the early 1990s it had began to consistently lose money. After 100 stores were divested, Bakers Oven blamed the rise of supermarket bread sales for its struggles.
The UK’s third largest bakery chain, Three Cooks, was also owned by a large British bread manufacturer, RHM (formerly Rank Hovis McDougall). The acquisition of Gladdings of Coventry took RHM to 300 outlets by the early 1990s.
Greggs differentiated from its two major rivals in being publicly listed from the 1980s onward, whilst maintaining a large family-owned stake.
A Bakers Oven Outlet in Willenhall in 1995
By 1993 Bakers Oven operated over 500 shops and employed over 5,000 people.
Greggs acquires Bakers Oven
In 1994 Greggs acquired Bakers Oven, with 424 stores and two main bakeries, for £18.5 million in cash. This took Greggs to a total of 929 outlets. Greggs was interested in expanding into the South East, where the majority of Bakers Oven outlets were based. Greggs was strongest in the North, particularly the North East, where it had a 40 percent market share in some areas. Greggs was also interested in learning about in-store baking and seated catering from the chain. As a combined group, Greggs was able to lower central buying costs and increase profitability. Greggs also announced plans to lower the pricing of Bakers Oven, which it regarded as excessive.
By 1995 Greggs had steered Bakers Oven into profitability by decreasing the focus on sliced white bread (in which they were undercut by supermarkets) and emphasising higher margin items such as sandwiches, savouries and pastries.
By 1996, 241 Bakers Oven outlets had been converted to the Greggs brand, mostly the units without in-store bakeries and seating and in less desirable locations. The Greggs model was to drive high volume value sales. However, new Bakers Oven outlets continued to be opened, and the chain was regarded as the company’s “premium brand”. In the late 1990s the chain was revamped, and items such as filter coffee and salad rolls were added to the menu.
By 2004 there were only 220 Bakers Oven outlets remaining. By 2006 the brand had been withdrawn from Scotland and the North of England, with all former outlets converted to Greggs. In December 2008 it was announced that the remaining 163 Bakers Oven outlets would be rebranded as Greggs.
Make your pickling liquor with 18kg of malt vinegar and add acetic acid or spirit vinegar until an acidity level of 6.12 percent is reached.
Take 9kg unpeeled heads of garlic and 18kg of unpeeled shallots (9kg of unpeeled red onions will suffice as a substitute for the shallots) and add to the pickle liquor. Allow the vegetables to age for at least a year until soft.
Meanwhile cure 11kg of Spanish anchovies in salt. Allow the anchovies to cure for at least three years.
When ready, mix together your pickles with 82 litres of malt vinegar (or walnut ketchup for historical accuracy). Add 6.4kg of black tamarind paste from Bengal. Add the anchovies. Then add 15kg of raw sugar and 4.5kg of salt. This is followed by 2.3kg green cayenne peppers from Fujian in China (preferably small and hot), 1kg cloves from Southeast Asia or Zanzibar, ginger, mace and 225ml essence of lemon.
Blend together and allow to ferment for a minimum of six weeks. Stir occasionally.
Add molasses to achieve the desired colour, and water to get to the desired consistency.
Finally, filter the sauce and then pasteurise for two minutes.
Always use the finest ingredients you can source. Mike Page, the Lea & Perrins technical manager, argues that the sauce will continue to age and improve in the bottle.
The original recipe called for 36 litres of soy sauce. It was replaced by hydrolysed vegetable protein from the Second World War but appears to no longer be used.
