Category Archives: Drink

Soft drinks

Welsh fire: Idris & Co

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Idris became one of the largest soft drinks manufacturers in Britain. Idris “Fiery” ginger beer continued to be sold until 2019.

Idris & Co is established
Thomas Howell Williams (1842 – 1925) was born at Vallen, Pembrokeshire, the son of a Baptist farmer. His first language was Welsh, and he did not learn to speak English until he was eight years old.

From the age of twelve Williams was apprenticed to a cousin in Crickhowell who worked as a chemist. He was restless and ambitious, and emigrated to London to work for a well-known firm of chemists in 1863.

Williams entered into business for himself with a chemist shop on Seven Sisters Road from 1870. It was there that he first introduced soft drinks under the Idris brand, named after a Welsh mountain.

Thomas Howell Williams Idris (1842 – 1925), c.1905

Manufacturing chemists of the era often produced soft drinks, which were purported to have medical benefits. Ginger ale, Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper were all created by chemists.

The soft drinks arm was successful, and Williams divested his chemists business and established Idris & Co, soft drink manufacturers, on Pratt Street, Camden Town, from 1875. Lemonade, ginger ale and soda water were the principal products. The business expanded quickly, and the factory site was repeatedly extended.

Idris & Co introduced a generous profit-sharing scheme for its 500 employees in 1891. Workers received wages 10 to 15 percent higher than the industry average, and conditions at their factory were described as superior. Workers received overtime pay during the peak summer season, and maintained full time hours during the slack winter period.

Idris & Co is incorporated
Idris & Co was incorporated with a nominal capital of £100,000 in 1892. The company was one of the largest soft drinks manufacturers in the world, and operated the largest soft drinks factory in England.

Williams added Idris to his surname by deed poll in 1893.

Idris & Co employed two automated carbonated soft drink filling machines, which were designed by Thomas Idris himself.

The business nearly doubled in size between 1895 and 1897. Additional factories had been established at Southampton by 1896 and at Liverpool by 1898.

A public offering raised company capital to £150,000 in 1897. The company held a Royal Warrant to supply Queen Victoria by 1897.

Cadair Idris in the Snowdonia National Park, Wales, after which the soft drink brand was named. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Idris & Co had a share capital of £216,000 by 1900. The company employed almost 1,000 people, including nearly 200 at the Camden Town factory. Five million bottles of carbonated soft drinks were sold, as well as millions of non-carbonated drinks. There were depots at Teddington, Watford, Reigate, Folkestone, Portsmouth and Bournemouth. That year, an additional factory was opened at Canterbury.

Horse-driven carts limited distribution to within a 17 mile radius. Motorised transportation was introduced from 1901.

Politically, Thomas Idris was a radical and a progressive. He invited representatives of the Social Democratic Federation and the National Democratic League to inspect his wages bill in 1902. They declared that Idris & Co paid the highest wages in the industry, that retired workers received pensions and that the profit-sharing scheme had distributed thousands of pounds to staff.

Thomas Idris was appointed Mayor of St Pancras in 1904-5. He served as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Flintshire from 1906 to 1910.

Idris & Co held a Royal Warrant to supply Edward VII by 1905.

120 women and girls at the Camden Town factory came out on strike in protest at the dismissal of an employee in 1911. The strikers agreed to an independent review of the case by the Board of Trade. The review cleared Idris & Co of any wrongdoing.

Idris & Co was distributing soft drinks within a 50 mile radius of its Camden Town factory by 1912. Depots were situated at Watford, Teddington, Enfield and Southend. The company had over one million bottles. The company had 21 lorries by 1914.

Idris “Fiery” ginger beer (2018)

Idris & Co held a Royal Warrant to supply George V by 1916.

Thomas Idris died with an estate valued at £30,317 in 1925. He was succeeded as chairman by his son, Walter Howell Williams Idris (1875 – 1939).

Idris & Co established a new depot at Chelmsford, Essex in 1936.

Walter Idris died in 1939, with a gross estate valued at £20,230.

Later history and acquisition of the business
Ivor Trevena Idris (1911 – 1993), the grandson of the late founder, was appointed company chairman from 1943.

The first female board member was elected in 1949.

Coca-Cola Bottlers of Scotland was acquired in 1961.

Idris ranked among the second-tier of national soft drinks producers, behind Schweppes, J Lyons and Beecham, but alongside R White & Sons and Tizer.

Idris entered into a joint-venture with Fuller Smith & Turner, the London brewer, for the 7 Up bottling franchise for London and the South East in 1964.

The antiquated Camden Town factories were closed in 1965, and production was relocated to a new site at White Hart Lane, Tottenham.

Idris & Co made a loss of £348,000 in 1965-6, following problems establishing the new factory, and a fire at the Coca-Cola Scotland plant. The company was acquired by Beecham, which owned the Lucozade, Ribena and Corona soft drinks brands, in 1967.

The Idris range included shandy, ginger beer and mixers by the mid-1970s.

Britvic acquired the Beecham soft drinks business in 1987. Idris “Fiery” ginger beer continued to be sold until 2019.

Soft drinks

On the rocks: H D Rawlings

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H D Rawlings was one of the largest and most prestigious soft drinks manufacturers in Victorian England.

The Rawlings family
Rawlings & Co claimed an establishment date of 1815 in a press advertisement from 1860.

John Rawlings (1771 – 1848), ginger beer manufacturer, was certainly based at Nassau Street, Fitzrovia by 1827. The exact address is confirmed as 2 Nassau Street by 1831.

Ginger beer was supplied in stone bottles.

John Rawlings died in 1848 and the business was inherited by his sons, John Rawlings (1806 – 1853) and James Rawlings (1814 – 1882).

In 1851 James Rawlings lived at 2 Nassau Street and was a ginger beer manufacturer employing 20 men. John Rawlings lived at 3 Nassau Street, and was also a ginger beer manufacturer.

John Rawlings died in 1853 and his stake in the business was inherited by his widow, Sarah Rawlings (1819 – 1863).

Henry Doo (1836 – 1904) joined the business as a clerk from 1855.

The business occupied 2-4 Nassau Street by 1856, and the range of drinks had been expanded to include lemonade and soda, as well as ginger beer.

H D Rawlings
Sarah Rawlings married Henry Doo in 1857, and he took her last name to become Henry Doo Rawlings.

Premises had extended to include 8 Charles Street, Fitzrovia by 1860.

At the instigation of James Rawlings, a works’ brass band was established in 1862. The firm enjoyed a strong relationship with its workforce, which it treated to an annual dinner or excursion.

Sarah Doo (nee Rawlings) died in September 1863, with an estate valued at under £7,000. H D Rawlings became the principal partner in the firm, although James Rawlings also had a stake, and the firm traded as H D & J Rawlings.

Less than four months after the death of his wife, Henry Doo Rawlings married Jane Sewell in Paris.

H D & J Rawlings held a Royal Warrant to supply Queen Victoria with soft drinks by 1864.

Henry Doo Rawlings was described as “lively, open-hearted and genial, easily approached, with no manifest sense of self-importance”. James Rawlings was described as more reserved, “but thoroughly cordial and kind when the ice was broken”.

The firm was a generous contributor to the Licensed Victuallers Asylum, a charity for retired victuallers.

The firm supplied the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Emperor of France by 1869.

James Rawlings retired in 1870, and the firm was continued under the name H D Rawlings.

Following a gas explosion at the Nassau Street factory in 1877. Henry Doo Rawlings and two other men received burns to their faces and hands, and had to be taken to Middlesex Hospital. Rawlings was examined by Sir James Paget (1814 – 1899), who believed it unlikely that the man would survive; to the doctor’s astonishment, he fully recovered.

The firm was based at 2 Nassau Street and Berners Street in 1879.

Henry Doo Rawlings was granted the Freedom of the City of London in 1886.

Draught ginger beer was introduced from 1887.

H D Rawlings is sold to R White & Sons
R White & Sons of Camberwell acquired H D Rawlings in 1891.  The business was incorporated as a limited company at this time. The Rawlings brand continued as the premium offering alongside the standard market R White’s soft drinks.

Henry Doo Rawlings retired from the business to become vice chairman of Meredith & Drew, a biscuit manufacturer.

H D Rawlings claimed that it could supply up to 120,000 stone bottles of ginger beer within a few hours notice in 1892. The Rawlings factory was on Neate Street, Camberwell by 1894.

Henry Doo Rawlings died from erysipelas in Paris in 1904. He left an estate valued at over £47,000.

H D Rawlings was based at 8 Mortimer Street, Fitzrovia and Neate Street, Camberwell in 1914. The company employed about 400 people.

The licensed trade in the London area was the principal customer for H D Rawlings products by 1952.

R White & Sons was acquired by Whitbread, a national brewer, in 1969.

H D Rawlings was based at Winsor Terrace, London by 1975. By this time the brand was primarily being marketed as a mixer for spirits, and was largely affiliated with the on-trade of clubs, hotels and public houses.

Whitbread and Bass merged their soft drinks operations to form Canada Dry Rawlings in 1980. Bass owned 65 percent of the venture and Whitbread owned the remainder. The business concentrated on supplying the licensed trade.

Britvic acquired Canada Dry Rawlings in 1986. Britvic phased out the Rawlings name in favour of the Britvic brand.

Britvic has been known to trace its origins to the establishment of the Rawlings business.

Soft drinks

Popular: Ben Shaw’s of Huddersfield

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Ben Shaw’s is one of the few regional survivors of the British soft drink industry. 30 million cans of Ben Shaw’s soft drinks are sold every year.

Benjamin Shaw establishes the business
Benjamin Shaw (1836 – 1901) was born at Kirkheaton, Huddersfield, the son of a farm labourer. He found work in the Huddersfield textile trade, initially as a woollen spinner, and then as a supervisor.

benshaw
Benjamin Shaw (1836 – 1901)

Benjamin Shaw established a partnership with his brother George Shaw from 1871, bottling Pennine spring water from premises on Charles Street, Huddersfield.

The first delivery was made to Thornton’s Temperance Hotel at 21 New Street, Huddersfield.

Soon, the firm expanded into non-alcoholic “botanic” porter and ginger beer, distributing their products by horse and cart.

Benjamin Shaw bought out his brother’s stake in the partnership for £317 in 1876, to become sole proprietor of the business. The firm employed seven men in 1881.

Shaw was a keen advocate of the temperance movement. He supported good causes, such as the establishment of a working men’s club in Huddersfield. He was nominated as a member of Huddersfield Town Council in 1881.

The firm relocated to a new factory on Upperhead Row, Huddersfield in 1883.

Production was relocated to a purpose-built factory on Willow Lane, Huddersfield from 1894. By this time the firm traded as Benjamin Shaw & Sons.

Shaw’s two sons takeover the business
Benjamin Shaw died in 1901, and left an estate of £6,955. He was succeeded in business by his two sons, Ernest (1858 – 1924) and Frank Shaw (born 1870).

A view of the Ben Shaw’s factory at Willow Lane (2007)

Benjamin Shaw & Sons was registered as a private company with capital of £20,000 in 1913.

Ernest Shaw died in 1924 with an estate valued at over £20,500. Beaumont Stephenson (1877 – 1948), a son-in-law of Benjamin Shaw, took charge of the company.

Clifford Stephenson takes control, and expands the business
Clifford Stephenson (1902 – 1992) took control of the company following the death of his father in 1948. Stephenson was a lifelong Methodist.

Stephenson became alderman of Huddersfield, and played a major role in the redevelopment of the town.

Distribution was extended into the neighbouring county of Lancashire in 1957.

From around this time the soft drinks were rebranded as “Ben Shaw’s”.

Ben Shaw’s became the first company in Europe to can soft drinks from 1959.

A new fully-automated factory was opened at Brockholes near Huddersfield in 1966. It could produce 100,000 cans a day and employed a staff of just 30. Between 1966 and 1971 sales doubled. Yellow lemonade was the highest-seller, and dandelion & burdock remained popular. The business remained essentially local in scope.

Ben Shaw’s held around three percent of the British carbonated soft drinks market by 1989.

Loss of family control, subsequent owners and closure of the Willow Lane factory
Overexpansion saw capital run low. Ben Shaw’s had excellent facilities, but lacked sufficient sales. The family were forced to sell control of the business to Rutland Trust, a turnaround specialist led by Michael Langdon, for £5.7 million in 1993.

Langdon sold a 51 percent stake in the Pontefract canning operation to Cott Beverages of Canada for £6 million in 1994.

Langdon negotiated new distribution deals with the major supermarkets chains, and was the leading supplier of own-label sparkling water by 1997.

The Willow Lane site was acquired by Britvic in 2004 when it bought the Ben Shaw’s bottled water business, including the Pennine Spring brand.

Cott Beverages of Canada acquired full control of Ben Shaw’s in 2005.

Britvic closed the Willow Lane factory in 2013. Production of the Pennine Spring bottled water brand was discontinued.

Cott was acquired by Refresco in 2017.

Soft drinks

Alright, R White

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R White & Son was the largest soft drinks producer in Britain, and possibly the world. R White’s remains the leading lemonade brand in Britain.*

Robert White establishes the business
Robert White (1825 – 1901) was born at Horsleydown, London. Assisted by his wife Mary, he sold homemade ginger beer from a cart in the streets of Camberwell from 1845. This was to prove a success, and he soon established a market stall.

rwhite

Sales grew, and a factory was established at Charles Street, Camberwell. The factory was greatly extended in 1866.

Ginger beer, soda water and lemonade were distributed throughout London. Unfortunately, Robert White overreached himself, and was forced to declare himself bankrupt in 1867.

Robert White was far from discouraged, however, and employed twelve people by 1871. By this time he had been joined in partnership by his two sons, Robert James White (1849 – 1921) and John George White (1851 – 1942), to form R White & Sons.

R White & Sons had established a factory at Cunard Street in Camberwell by 1881, and employed a workforce of 50.

H Wilcox, soft drinks manufacturers of Rodney Road, Walworth, was acquired in 1884.

R White & Sons enters into mass production
R White & Sons had a stock of three million stone bottles by 1886. Unlike some manufacturers, the firm had not yet made the transition to glass bottles, which were increasing in popularity.

Artis Capel & Co, soft drinks manufacturers of Neate Street, Camberwell, had been acquired by 1888.

Robert White retired from the partnership in 1888. There were two factories on Neate Street and one on Cunard Street, all in Camberwell; one on Rodney Road, Walworth; one at Kingston upon Thames; and one at Barking. Neate Street was the principal manufacturing site.

R White & Sons grew quickly because of the low cost of sugar. The business sold 46.8 million bottles of soft drinks, over 410,000 gallons of soft drinks in casks and over 31,000 gallons of cordials in 1890.

H D Rawlings, a prestigious soft drinks manufacturer of Marylebone, was acquired in 1891.

R White & Sons was incorporated as a public company in 1894, with a share capital of £300,000. By this time it was one of the largest soft drinks manufacturers in London. The company had seven modern factories and thirteen depots in London and the Home Counties. It supplied 40,000 trade customers via a distribution network of 639 horses and 325 vans. The company was largely debt-free (under £3,000).

The business continued to grow rapidly, and an 1897 advertisement claimed that the company was the largest manufacturer of soft drinks in the world.

R White & Sons was awarded the licence to distribute Kops Ale, a non-alcoholic beer, in the London district from 1892. The Kops Brewery business was acquired outright in 1898.

R White & Sons had thirteen factories, including sites in Birmingham and Manchester, by 1899. There were also three breweries where Kops Ale was produced. There were 15 depots located throughout the South East of England. That year, share capital was increased to £800,000.

A factory at George Street, Camberwell, used for producing flavouring and preservative chemicals, was destroyed by fire in 1903, with damage estimated at £100,000 to £150,000.

R J and J G White were well-regarded as employers, and the workforce was a contented one. An employee sick fund was established in 1895.

R J White was a local philanthropist. In 1902 he opened the largest and best-equipped soup kitchen in Camberwell at his Albany Road factory. He funded the distribution of 143,000 quarts of soup in 1903. In 1905 he took 1,400 poor Camberwell children on an excursion to his farm at Ewell.

It was claimed that R White’s produced half of all lemonade and ginger beer sold in England by 1908. The London factory covered 20 acres, and the company employed 3,000 horses and 1,000 lorries.

Company capital was reduced in 1910, and again in 1914, to £82,000.

Over 600 R White & Sons men were serving in the armed forces by 1918.

In 1921 R White & Sons was fined by Surrey County Council for misleading the public by advertising its lemonade as being made with “Messina lemons”. An analysis found that R White’s lemonade was simply carbonated sugar water acidified with phosphoric acid, four times the maximum amount allowed by the British Pharmacopoeia. There was no trace of lemon juice in it. The company stated that it had used phosphoric acid for forty years as it enhanced the lifespan of the product, and that they used lemon oil for flavouring purposes. The company was fined £41 including costs.

Robert James White died in 1921 with an estate valued at £96,506.

Company capital was increased to £164,000 in 1925. R White & Sons was reconverted into a private company in 1927.

Sydney John White (1884 – 1938) died in 1938 with an estate valued at £192,484. He had been a director of R White & Sons and the managing director of H D Rawlings.

John George White died in 1942 with an estate valued at £268,073.

R White & Sons employed 725 people in 1951. In 1952 the company had seven factories in London, the Home Counties and Birmingham, with a production capacity of over 1.5 million bottles per week, and a fully-paid capital of £500,000. Net tangible assets amounted to £847,000. That year, the family-controlled company was forced to go public in order to meet the cost of death duties.

Harold Artis White, a director of R White & Sons, left an estate of £122,933 in 1957.

By the 1960s R White & Sons ranked among the second-tier of national drinks companies, alongside Tizer and Idris, but behind the “Big Three” of Schweppes, J Lyons and Beechams.

R White & Sons is acquired by Whitbread
R White & Sons was acquired by Whitbread, a brewer, for £3 million in 1969. The takeover was recommended by the directors, who sold their 60 percent stake in the company. It was Whitbread’s first major venture into soft drinks, and was to prove difficult and unrewarding for the brewer, despite substantial investment.

Whitbread divested the R White & Sons factory at Barking in 1972, and transferred production to a new factory at Beckton, East London, where it continues to this day. Built at a cost of £4 million across a 6.5 acre site, it was one of the largest soft drinks bottling plants in Britain.

The popular “Secret Lemonade drinker” television advertising campaign was launched in 1973. It continued to air until 1984.

R White & Sons held a franchise to produce Pepsi-Cola by 1975. Between 1975-77 the company held the franchise to produce A G Barr’s Irn-Bru for the London area.

R White & Sons held ten percent of the British market for carbonated drinks (excluding cola) by 1977, and was the brand leader in lemonade, with a 40 percent share.

Mergers and product portfolio rationalisation
Whitbread and Bass merged their soft drinks operations to form Canada Dry Rawlings from 1980. Bass owned 65 percent of the venture and Whitbread owned the remainder. The business concentrated on supplying the licensed trade.

R White’s held 2.5 percent of the carbonated soft drinks market (excluding cola) in 1985-6.

Britvic acquired Canada Dry Rawlings in 1986. The merger brought together Britvic’s strength in fruit juices and cordials, and Canada Dry Rawlings’ strength in carbonated drinks.

R White’s had the fourth highest sales for a carbonated drinks brand in Britain in 1989, behind only Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Schweppes.

As late as 1994, R White’s produced dandelion and burdock, cream soda and ginger beer, as well as lemonade, but these were soon phased out until only lemonade was available.

R White’s was the third highest selling soft drink brand in the British on-trade (sales in pubs and bars) in 2009.

Sugar in R White’s had been replaced by artificial sweeteners by 2010.

Notes
* Sprite and 7 Up are lemon-lime drinks, and thus not “lemonade”.

Hospitality, Tea

As easy as: ABC tea shops

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The ABC tea shop was a ubiquitous part of early twentieth century London life, mentioned by T S Eliot and Virginia Woolf, and lambasted by George Orwell.

Origins
The Aerated Bread Company (ABC) was incorporated in London with a nominal capital of £500,000 in 1862. The business was formed in order to manufacture bread using a new patented process which used carbon dioxide instead of yeast.

As a mass producer of bread, ABC had a large number of contracts with institutions such as schools and hospitals. It also had a number of retail outlets in London from which its sold bread and cakes directly to customers.

Establishment of the ABC tea shop chain
In 1884 Miss Turnbull, a manager at a ABC bakery shop near London Bridge Station, suggested to the company directors that on-site sales of tea might increase revenues. Her suggestion was to prove successful, and soon all the ABC outlets sold tea as well as bread and cakes.

Competitors sold pre-prepared tea from a large container, and the quality was variable. ABC differentiated itself by preparing fresh tea to order.

The tea shops proved popular among clerical workers, who appreciated their affordable prices, and there were around 70 outlets by 1889.

An ABC shop at Ludgate Hill, date unknown
An ABC shop at Ludgate Hill, date unknown

Production at a centralised bakery in Camden Town from 1891 helped to keep costs low.

ABC did not escape criticism however; it became notorious for the meagre pay it gave its waitresses, who worked a 62-hour week.

ABC appears to have begun to exploit its monopoly position. Leo Chiozza Money (1870 – 1944) complained:

very high prices [were charged]. The shops were not attractive. The ABC scheme of decoration [was] simply appalling. The food was very plain and the portions served … were stingy.

Increased competition from J Lyons
J Lyons opened its first tea shop in 1894. Lyons branches were more upmarket and better managed than the ABC shops.

ABC transitioned its tea shops into affordable restaurants, with enlarged menus, in order to compete with Lyons.

Lyons had more central London outlets than ABC by 1911.

ABC served over 1.25 million customers across 150 branches in 1911. A contemporary commentator indicated that service was slow, but the quality of the tea was “beyond reproach”.

New management from Buszard
ABC acquired W & G Buszard, a London bakery chain with 140 shops, including the prestigious Criterion restaurant in Piccadilly, in 1918. ABC were attracted to the merger by the strong management team at Buszard. Buszard directors, led by Charles Cottier (1869 – 1928) and Frederick Hutter (1876 – 1927), quickly came to dominate the ABC board, with Cottier serving as chairman and Hutter as managing director.

Cottier was a forceful personality, and under his leadership ABC undertook numerous acquisitions from 1919. These were Bertram & Co (railway catering), James Cottle (Liverpool and Manchester restaurants), Cabins, JP Restaurants (with 80 outlets around London), Newberys (shop-fitters), Abford Estates (a large property development) and a controlling interest in W Hill & Sons (29 shops), at a combined cost of just under £500,000.

Frederick Hutter was described as the “Napoleon” of the London catering trade. He came from humble origins, and had begun his career as a baker’s assistant.

ABC operated 200 to 250 tea shops and restaurants by 1922. The manufacturing site at Camden Town covered over four acres.

ABC had 156 branches across London in 1926. That year also saw the prim black and white “Victorian” waitress uniforms replaced by blue dresses.

ABC opened the largest tea shop in Britain, opposite Victoria Station, in 1926. The site was bought from the Duke of Westminster, supposedly for £500,000.

Hutter died in 1927, and Cottier died the following year. It appears that the business suffered following the loss of their strong leadership.

Following a spate of low profits, Sir W H Peat (1878 – 1959), the well-known accountant, was contracted to perform an independent review of the company in 1929. Peat argued that the numerous recent acquisitions did not tie in with the core ABC business, and as such, very few economies of scale could be made. He also argued that the company had paid excessive dividends, and had failed to update and modernise its shops, which had become run-down.

The manufacture of aerated bread ended in 1954.

Allied Bakeries rejuvenates ABC
ABC had 164 outlets and was the second largest restaurant chain in Britain by the mid-1950s. However the business had become loss-making.

ABC was acquired by Allied Bakeries, controlled by W Garfield Weston (1898 – 1978), for £2.9 million in 1955. Allied Bakeries were motivated by the opportunity to increase the number of outlets for their bread and biscuits. Allied Bakeries had also privately valued the ABC real estate assets at between £1.7 million and £2 million.

Allied Bakeries sold six or seven ABC sites in central London for £1 million. The money was used to invest in the ABC business. The Camden Town factory was modernised. Unprofitable branches in the West End of London were sold, and new outlets opened in the suburbs. Shops across the chain were refurbished to bring them in line with competitors.

Allied Bakeries sold the Abford House subsidiary, which consisted of a large freehold property in Victoria, London, for over £500,000 to Spiers & Pond, a hotels and catering company, in 1959.

The previously loss-making venture had become one of the most profitable subsidiaries of Allied Bakeries by 1959. ABC reported a profit before tax of over £850,000 in 1962. A pre-tax profit of £735,000 was reported in 1966.

Decline of the ABC tea shop
Trade at the tea shops began to decline from the 1960s and into the 1970s. Rising ingredients costs had rendered handmade cakes an unaffordable luxury. 20 ABC tea shops were closed in 1975, and a further 35 the following year. 30 more were closed in 1976. Some outlets switched to a takeaway sandwich model.

Production of hand-finished cakes at the Camden Town site was ended in 1976, resulting in the loss of over 400 jobs. Bread production also ended.

The Camden Town site was antiquated and unsuited for modern production, and it was closed with the loss of 200 jobs in 1982. The remaining ABC tea shops also disappeared at around this time. The Camden site was demolished a few years later, and a Sainsbury’s supermarket now stands in its place.

Beer & cider

Largest brewery in the world: historic claimants

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In 1750 to 1760, John Calvert of London had the largest brewery in the world.

From at least 1780 until 1808 Whitbread of London was the largest brewer in the world.

In 1809 Barclay Perkins of Southwark, London became the largest brewer in the world.

In 1858 Allsopp & Son erected the largest brewery in the world at Burton upon Trent in the English Midlands.

By the 1870s Bass at Burton upon Trent was the largest brewer in the world.

By 1886 the Guinness site at St James’s Gate in Dublin was the largest brewery in the world.

By 1929 as many as 10 million glasses of Guinness could be sold in a single day.

In 2015 the Miller Coors facility at Golden, Colorado is the largest single-site brewery in the world.

Tea

Brewing up a storm: Tetley tea

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Joseph Tetley became the largest tea packer in America. The business popularised the tea bag in Britain.

Joseph Tetley & Co
Joseph Tetley (1811 -1899) and his brother Edward began to sell salt from a horse and cart in Bradford, Yorkshire from 1837. Before long, tea was added to their wares.

The business had relocated to Huddersfield by 1851, and employed 14 people. The Tetley brothers relocated to 25 Cullum Street in London, close to the tea auction houses of Mincing Lane, from 1856. The business employed 18 people in 1861.

Edward Tetley left the business in 1865. Joseph Ackland entered the business as a partner and the business traded as Joseph Tetley & Co.

Tetley & Co became the first firm to introduce India and Ceylon tea to the British market. Previously only Chinese tea had been sold.

Joseph took on his son, Joseph Tetley Jr (1850 – 1935) and long-term employee Samuel Furniss as partners in the business from 1871. Tetley & Co also expanded into blending and packaging tea for itself.

Joseph Tetley and his son acquired the Ackland and Furniss stakes in 1880. By this time the premises were at 31 Fenchurch Street.

Success in America
Joseph Tetley & Co established a sales agency in New York from 1888. The firm became the first to introduce India and Ceylon tea to the American market.

Joseph Tetley & Co was the second largest tea blender in the world by 1901, behind only Thomas Lipton. The two businesses dominated the market for Ceylon tea.

Joseph Tetley & Co was incorporated as public company in 1907, and as a private company a year later. Tetley was the largest purchaser of India and Ceylon tea by this time.

Joseph Tetley was the largest tea business in the world by 1911.

An American subsidiary was established in New York from 1913. Due to difficulties importing packaged tea from Britain during the First World War a six storey tea packing plant was acquired on Greenwich Street in New York in 1917.

Tetley Ironside Tetley-Jones introduces the tea bag to Britain
Joseph Tetley Jr died in 1935 with an estate valued at £75,000 (equivalent to £29.5 million in 2015). His nephew, William Tetley-Jones took over the company, but died just a few months later. The company was inherited by his son, Tetley Ironside Tetley-Jones (1912 – 1990).

Tetley-Jones visited America in 1939, where he encountered the growing popularity of the tea bag, as opposed to brewing with loose leaves. Tetley-Jones pioneered mass production of the tea bag in Britain from 1940. Initially production was for export only, due to rationing in Britain.

The London premises were damaged during the Blitz in 1941, and a new production facility was opened at Bletchley in Buckinghamshire. By this time the head office was at Mansell Street, still close to Mincing Lane.

Joseph Tetley & Co was converted back into a public company with a share capital of £410,000 (£50.7 million in 2015), in 1951. Net assets were valued at just under £600,000 (£74 million in 2015). The company ranked among the four largest tea packers in the United States.

The end of rationing allowed Tetley-Jones to introduce the tea bag to the British consumer from 1953. Tetley-Jones spearheaded the initiative, and had to fight the scepticism of his board of directors. The head tea buyer for Brooke Bond, the largest tea company in the world, announced that his company would never produce tea bags, which he believed imparted the taste of paper to the product.

The Bletchley plant was divested in 1958, and all production was relocated to a new factory at Eaglescliffe in County Durham. The same year, a new factory was opened at Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Total company capital rose to £750,000 (£58 million in 2015).

Joseph Tetley & Co is sold to Beech-Nut Life Savers
Tetley Ironside Tetley-Jones believed that the business was too small to compete against larger companies such as Brooke Bond, and had been searching for a buyer for years. Joseph Tetley & Co was acquired by Beech-Nut Life Savers of New York for £2.3 million in cash (£148 million in 2015) in 1961. Whilst a leader in the small British tea bag market, most company profits came from the American subsidiary. Tetley-Jones was retained as chairman.

Beech-Nut Life Savers provided the capital necessary for expansion of production and marketing of the tea bags. Tea bags had taken five percent of the British market by 1964, and all the production belonged to Tetley. It was only that year that the major tea packers introduced their own tea bags.

Tetley tea bag sales grew by 58 percent to the catering trade, and by 41 percent to the domestic trade in 1965. The company was exporting millions of tea bags every year.

Tetley tea bag sales rose 63 percent to a total of two billion bags in 1967. Tetley held two thirds of the retail market for tea bags, and 50 percent of the catering market.

Tetley sold 5,000 tonnes of tea bags in 1968. Tetley held 65 percent of the British tea bag market in 1969.

Tetley-Jones retired in 1970.

J Lyons acquires Tetley
J Lyons, the British catering giant, and a major tea producer itself, acquired Tetley for £23 million (£524 million in 2015) in 1973. Following the takeover, Lyons Tetley held around 17 percent of the British tea market.

The “Tetley tea folk “advertising campaign was launched in 1973.

The Eaglescliffe plant was the largest tea bag factory in the world by 1986.

Tetley introduced the round tea bag from 1989.

Tetley was acquired by Tata, an Indian conglomerate, for £271 million in 2000.

Tetley is the fourth highest-selling tea brand in Britain as of 2019.

Note: all current day wealth calculations are measured as a percentage of GDP, and are taken from measuringworth.com

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Top tips: Typhoo tea

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How did Typhoo become one of the highest-selling tea brands in Britain?

Early history and introduction of Typhoo
William Sumner (born c. 1796) acquired Pratchett & Noble, a chemist and grocery business at 97 High Street Birmingham, in 1820. The sale of tea soon became a major component of the business. Control of the business passed to his son, John Sumner Snr (born 1824), from 1852.

John Sumner Jr (1856 – 1934) joined the family business after leaving school. He began to package and market a blend of Ceylon tea leaf tips from 1903. Leaf was generally sold loose from shops, and pre-packaged tea was still a relatively unknown product.

John Sumner Jr (1856 – 1934)

Sumner successfully marketed the tea as a cure for nervousness and an aid to digestion, under the brand name Typhoo Tipps. He derived the Typhoo name from a Chinese word meaning doctor.

John Sumner Jr divested the grocery business in 1905 and founded a private company to produce and market his packaged tea. A factory was established at Castle Street in Digbeth, Birmingham. Rapid expansion occurred, accompanied by aggressive marketing.

Sumner established a blending operation in Ceylon in 1909. This allowed him to buy directly from growers, thus saving costs by cutting out the middleman.

Sumner retired in 1926 and dedicated much of the rest of his life to philanthropy. The business was taken over by his son, John Richard Hugh Sumner (1887 – 1971). The factory was relocated to Bordesley Street, also in Digbeth, in 1930.

Typhoo becomes a mass market brand
Typhoo tea was sold in over 40,000 outlets by the early 1930s, making it one of the highest-selling packet teas in Britain.

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Operations ended in Ceylon in 1933, after it was discovered that the Ceylon agents had overcharged the business for inferior tea.

John Sumner died in 1934 and left an estate valued at £740,041.

Wartime bombing damaged over two thirds of the Birmingham factory in 1941. With reconstruction materials scarce, limited production was relocated to Brooke Bond and J Lyons for the remainder of the war.

Typhoo was incorporated with a capital of £750,000 in 1949. This figure was increased to £1.1 million in 1954.

Typhoo established a high degree of efficiency by concentrating on a single product, in a single pack, with a single price.

A £22 million takeover bid by Kraft of Chicago was rejected in 1960. Kraft had been attracted by a growing market for tea in the United States.

Typhoo held around 15 percent of the British tea market throughout the 1960s, behind Brooke Bond and the Co-op, and alongside J Lyons.

Sumner retired in 1966 and the managing director, Henry Claude Kelley (1897 – 1974), became chairman.

Typhoo began to manufacture tea bags from 1967. Typhoo had been slow to respond to the innovation, and had allowed rivals such as Tetley and Brooke Bond to steal a significant lead.

Typhoo is acquired by Schweppes
Typhoo was acquired by Schweppes, the soft drinks concern, for £45 million in 1968. Schweppes intended to utilise its strong marketing skills and global distribution network to increase Typhoo sales. It was almost a merger of equals, with Typhoo shareholders holding around 40 percent of the combined entity. H C Kelley joined the Schweppes board of directors.

Schweppes merged with Cadbury in 1969.

The Kenco coffee company was acquired for around £2 million in 1969 and merged with the Typhoo business.

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The 160,000 sq ft factory in Digbeth, Birmingham employed 550 workers when it was closed in 1978. All the workers were offered alternative employment by Cadbury, who had significant operations in the area. The closure occurred as the Birmingham site was unsuitable for conversion to high-speed production.

Production was relocated to Moreton, Merseyside, which had been acquired by Cadbury in 1953 as a biscuit production plant. Moreton is conveniently located just a short distance away from the Port of Liverpool, where tea arrives by boat.

Typhoo held around 14 percent of the British tea market by 1984, behind only Brooke Bond and Lyons Tetley.

Sale by Schweppes and subsequent ownership
Typhoo was acquired by its management in 1986, and the company became known as Premier Brands. That year Melrose, the Scottish tea business, was acquired.

Typhoo was acquired by Premier Foods in 1990. In a marketing-led industry, the brand lacked an advertising campaign with the memorability of the PG Tips chimpanzees or the Tetley tea folk. Its share of the tea market had dwindled to just three percent by 1993.

Premier Foods sold Typhoo to Apeejay Surrendra Group of India for £80 million in 2005.

Typhoo placed fifth in the British tea market in 2015, with a market share of around ten percent. Typhoo was the eighth highest-selling tea in Britain in 2019.

The Moreton site became the largest packer of own-label tea in the UK, producing around 25 percent of all tea consumed in Britain.

Typhoo was sold to Zetland Capital in 2021.

The Moreton factory was closed in 2023, with the loss of 85 jobs. Production of Typhoo tea was subcontracted to third party suppliers.

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A history of the largest tea companies in Britain

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The highly competitive nature of the British tea industry has seen a number of different market leaders emerge at different points in time.

Horniman & Co was the first company in the world to package tea (as opposed to loose-leaf sales by grocers). By 1867 they claimed to have the largest stock of tea in Britain in their warehouses. By 1880 they sold over 5 million packets a year. By 1890 they had export sales of 500,000 lbs a week.

By 1892 Horniman had been overtaken by Mazawattee, who sold over 14 million packets of tea each year. Mazawattee had introduced a brand that was blended entirely from fashionable Ceylon tea leaves. They also advertised more heavily than Horniman.

By 1897 Lipton & Co claimed the largest sales of tea in the world, with one million packets sold each week. Lipton had acquired their own tea plantations in Ceylon, and by cutting out the middleman, were able to offer lower prices to the consumer.

In 1903 John Sumner began to package a new blend which used only the tips of the tea leaf. With the distinctive name of Typhoo, it had lower tannin levels and a higher caffeine content, Sumner claimed digestive properties for his product.

By 1915 J Lyons & Co sold 5 million packets of tea each week, and were far and away the market leader in Britain, stocked in 160,000 outlets. In 1922 they claimed that 7 million people drank their tea every week.

In 1923 the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) claimed that it was the largest tea business in the world, with a sale of over 60 million lbs of tea every year. By 1932 this figure had increased to 100 million lbs a year.

In 1939 the CWS was the largest tea blender and distributor in the United Kingdom, controlling around 25 percent of the supply. It was followed by Lyons, Brooke Bond and Allied Suppliers (who controlled Lipton).

CWS tea sales declined with the rise of the supermarket chains: the new chains saw CWS, who operated their own grocery stores, as a rival, and refused to stock their tea.

By 1957 Brooke Bond was probably the largest tea company in the world, with around one third of the British and Indian tea markets.

In the 1960s, Tetley grew from a minor player to a major force in tea after it pioneered the use of the tea bag in Britain.

Brooke Bond was still the largest tea company in the world when it was acquired by Unilever in 1984. Unilever had acquired Lipton in 1971.

Today Lipton is the largest tea brand in the world, with most production centered on a single site in Dubai.

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A potted history of Twining & Co

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Twinings is the leading premium tea brand in the world, and the highest-selling tea brand in Britain.

The first two hundred years
The Twining family originated from Gloucestershire, where they frequently found employment in the weaving industry. Recession in the trade led Daniel Twining to migrate to London with his family in 1684. His son, Thomas Twining (1675 – 1741), acquired Tom’s Coffee House on Deveraux Court, at the back of 216 Strand, in 1706. The shop was well-sited to serve the aristocracy.

As well as coffee, Twining began to sell the rare but fashionable tea. Twining was supplying tea by royal appointment to Queen Anne by 1711. Twining acquired the Golden Lyon at 216 Strand in 1717: the company still trades from the same premises today.

The Twining tea shop on the Strand, central London.
The Twining tea shop on the Strand, central London.

Coffee had been phased out in order to focus on tea by 1734.

Thomas’s son, Daniel Twining, took over the business, and by 1749 was exporting tea to America. The business was run by Daniel’s widow, Mary Twining, between 1762 and 1782.

Richard Twining (1749 – 1824) took over management of the business from 1782. He advised the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, to dramatically reduce the tax on tea in order to reduce smuggling in 1784. Tea sales subsequently quadrupled.

Twinings introduced its current logo, reputedly the oldest commercial logo to be in continuous use since its inception, from 1787.

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Jane Austen revealed herself to be a Twinings tea customer in an 1814 letter.

Twinings also developed a substantial banking subsidiary. It was spun-off as an independent business from 1824.

Twinings received a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria in 1838. It has held a Royal Warrant from each successive British monarch ever since.

Twinings sourced their tea from China. Tea from India and Assam began to be used from 1839. Ceylon tea began to be used from 1879.

From the eighteenth century until the late nineteenth century, staff in the shop wore swallow tail coats and white ties.

The Twinings bank struggled to compete as rivals grew larger, and it was acquired by Lloyds Bank in 1892.

Twinings in the twentieth century
Twining & Co survived by keeping up with modern developments. Also, Twinings was fortunate in that all of the family members who had had controlled the business had been competent managers. Also, unlike many other tea companies, Twinings never owned tea plantations, which meant that it wasn’t tied to its own producers, and was free to select the best tea crops each year.

Twinings was registered as a limited liability company with a capital of £100,000 in 1904.

The tea interests of Harrisons Crosfield of Bankside were acquired in 1916. The merged business was registered as a private company called Twining Crosfield, with a share capital of £50,000. It was likely the second largest tea blending concern after Brooke Bond.

Part of the Twinings shop and the entire back premises were destroyed during the Blitz in 1941. Business continued throughout the war, although the damage necessitated that administration was relocated to Vincent Square in Westminster, followed by the Minories in the City of London, until the premises were rebuilt in 1953.

Twinings became a public company with a share capital of £400,000 in 1952. The company employed a staff of 450, and had net assets of almost £525,000. Manufacturing premises were at Wellclose Square, with floorspace of over 42,000 sq ft. There were also smaller factories at Belfast and Staffordshire. As well as the Strand location, the company operated shops at Wigmore Street and William Street, Knightsbridge.

Twinings undertook advertising for the first time in 1956. This move was prompted by the rise in sales of branded teas such as PG Tips.

Twinings is acquired by Associated British Foods
Twinings was acquired by Associated British Foods for £2 million in 1964. The friendly takeover by ABF, controlled by W G Weston (1898 – 1978), beat a hostile bid from Beech-Nut Life Savers of New York. Beech-Nut had planned to merge Twinings with its own Tetley Tea operation. ABF vowed to allow Twinings to continue to operate independently.

The main factory in southeast London was struggling to cope with demand. Production was relocated to a new £3 million plant in Andover, Hampshire from 1966. Andover was chosen as it was halfway between London and Avonmouth, where the tea docked, and close to Southampton, from where it was exported. Eighty families were relocated to the new factory. The seven acre site contained one of the most modern automated factories in the world, and employed 700 workers.

An additional factory was opened at North Shields in the North East of England from 1970.

A dedicated marketing manager, Brynley Evans (born 1940), was brought in from the Rank Organisation. Evans was appointed as managing director from 1973.

Twinings tea had strong sales overseas by the 1970s. Japan and France were the leading export markets, whilst American sales continued to grow strongly, with a 55 percent rise between January and October 1971. Meanwhile the company gained distribution in British supermarkets with its speciality teas such as Earl Grey.

Twinings was the second largest supplier of black tea in Japan by 1974, with 32 percent of the market.

Company turnover was over £18 million in 1976. Export sales more than quadrupled to £8 million between 1969 and 1976, and Twinings tea was exported to over 80 countries. The company blended and packed 23 different types of tea. Twinings was the biggest British buyer of tea from China. Twinings supplied 26 percent of all the tea consumed in France.

Twinings opened a $6 million tea manufacturing facility at Greensboro, North Carolina from 1980.

Annual export sales had reached £17 million by 1983. Twinings was a brand leader in Japan by this time.

Twinings was the largest British exporter of tea to America by 1984. Earl Grey was the company’s bestseller worldwide.

The Greensboro plant was closed with the loss of 90 jobs in 2005.

Twinings closed the North Shields factory in 2011 and halved the workforce at the Andover plant. All export production was relocated to Swarzedz in Poland, with the loss of nearly 400 jobs in Britain. Twinings also applied to the European Union for €12 million in investment grants to assist with the relocation, but this was denied.

Twinings overtook PG Tips to become the highest-selling tea in the UK in 2019.

Twinings is sold in 115 countries across the world as of 2020.