Category Archives: Hospitality

Hospitality

Night on the tiles: Slaters restaurants

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Slaters became one of the largest catering companies in the world.

Slaters
Thomas Slater (1794 – 1866) had established a butchers business on Kensington High Street by 1819.

The business received a Royal Warrant to supply Queen Victoria from 1837. Soon, Slater supplied a large proportion of the Royal Family, and twelve of the leading gentlemen’s clubs in London.

The business was probably one of the largest and most prestigious butchers shops in Britain by 1845.

Thomas Slater died in 1866, and the business continued to be operated by his sons.

John Crowle acquires and expands Slaters
John Crowle (1841 – 1906) was the son of William Crowle, a butcher and farmer of 25 acres at Charlestown, Cornwall.

John Crowle worked at his father’s butchers shop in St Austell. He relocated to London in 1869 and operated a butchers shop. His brother Thomas Crowle (1826 – 1877) had already moved to London, and managed a butchers shop on Newington Green Road.

John Crowle partnered with Thomas Crowle and acquired Slaters from Alfred Slater (born 1830) in 1872. The business was substantial, with a turnover of £75,000 a year.

John Crowle bought out his brother’s stake in the business in 1873.

Through energy, enthusiasm and perseverance, John Crowle’s butcher’s shop prospered. He employed thirteen men at his shop by 1881. Crowle added a restaurant on the upper floor of the shop. Soon, further outlets were established across the West End of London.

Slaters became a limited company from 1889. Outlets were located around central London, with a flagship restaurant in Piccadilly. The restaurants targeted the upper middle and lower upper class markets.

Crowle was a staunch Wesleyan Methodist and temperance advocate, and as a result his restaurants did not serve alcohol. As diners did not linger over drinks, the restaurants enjoyed a faster turnover of customers, and a lunchtime table could be filled up to six times.

There were eleven Slaters outlets by 1900, mostly located in the City of London, but also in West London and the West End. The restaurants had elegant interiors with white tablecloths and napkins.

The loss-making ice cream business was sold to Carlo Gatti & Stevenson Ltd in 1901.

John Crowle died in 1906. His estate was valued at £448,696, half of which he gifted to the temperance movement in his will (he had lost his only son to typhoid fever during the Boer War). It was one of the largest bequests to date in Britain.

Slaters becomes one of the largest catering companies in the world
Slaters had 21 restaurants and sold 120,000 meals a week by 1907.

The company struggled in the period following the death of Crowle. After a massive decline in profits, the managing director, William Kirkland, was dismissed in 1911.

Alcohol licences had been introduced to at least some of the Slaters restaurants by 1912.

Slaters operated thirteen à la carte restaurants and nearly 40 grocery outlets, all located within London and its suburbs, by 1913. The company had capital of £355,000.

Slaters operated 60 outlets, and had an annual turnover of over £600,000 by 1916. This included the largest fishmonger business in Britain, and the largest poulterers business in London, which together had 26 branches and a turnover of nearly £200,000 a year. Fish was supplied to many leading hotels and restaurants throughout London.

The First World War saw the customer base eroded, and many of the restaurants became loss-making.

Slaters was one of the largest catering companies in the world by 1926. A freehold property on Oxford Street was acquired for £100,000 in 1928.

Slaters acquires Bodega
The authorised capital of Slaters was increased to £1 million in order to acquire Bodega, a restaurant company, in 1928. The merged company was known as Slaters & Bodega. The acquisition brought with it 30 outlets, and two hotels, one in Yarmouth and one in Eastbourne. The catering businesses were complementary, and it was anticipated that there would be efficiency savings across management and overheads.

The Slaters on Kensington High Street became a favourite restaurant of the Irish novelist James Joyce (1882 – 1941) in 1931.

Slaters & Bodega operated three provincial hotels, 29 Slater Restaurants and Beta Cafes, 37 shops, 25 Bodega wine bars and four Cope’s wine lodges by 1932.

War-time struggles, and acquisition by Charles Forte
The Second World War had a severe impact upon Slaters & Bodega. 92 out of 119 company outlets had been damaged or destroyed by enemy action by May 1941. War-time conditions also seriously impacted upon sales.

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Slaters & Bodega became the subject of takeover speculation, and was acquired by Charles Forte (1908 – 2007), an Italian entrepreneur with interests in catering and property, for £1.55 million in 1954. Financial backing from Ind Coope, a large brewer and owner of public houses, helped Forte to almost double the size of his catering empire.

Forte immediately divested the Slaters fish and vegetable shops, however Slaters & Bodega continued as a subsidiary of the Forte empire until at least 1964.

Hospitality

Catering to the masses: Levy & Franks

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Levy & Franks pioneered the introduction of catering to public houses in the late nineteenth century. The business developed the Chef & Brewer concept, which survives as the second oldest pub chain in the world.

Origins
Isaac Levy (born 1845) was born into a working class Jewish family from Whitechapel, London. He worked as a bookmaker before he acquired the licence of The Pitt’s Head pub on Old Street, London in 1887.

The King Lud, Ludgate Circus (1908)

As the capital grew, city workers increasingly commuted from the suburbs, and were keen for somewhere to buy a hot lunch. However, pubs at the time were descendants of the gin dens, and it was difficult to get a good cup of tea, let alone a meal. Levy was passionate about food, and he acquired The King Lud at Ludgate Circus, where he began to sell Welsh rarebit.

Establishment of Levy & Franks
Ezekiel Levy (born 1872), the son of Isaac Levy, followed his father into the public house trade when he acquired the licence of the Admiral Keppel, Fulham Road in 1893 (later sold to Levy & Franks in 1924).

Ezekiel Levy entered into partnership with his brother in law, Henry “Harry” Franks (born 1869), to acquire the licensed premises of his father in 1897.

Isaac Levy grew wealthy and relocated to 50 Russell Square, where he employed five servants by 1901.

Levy & Franks rebuilt the Thurland Hall public house in Nottingham after they acquired it for £8,000 in 1898.

Harry Franks introduced the Chef & Brewer brand name in 1901.

Levy & Franks was incorporated as a private company in 1911.

Levy & Franks controlled 70 to 80 public houses by 1914. A typical daily sale for one of their pubs was 600 sandwiches, 135 meat pies and 800 Welsh rarebits.

Establishment as a public company and subsequent owners
Levy & Franks was converted into a public company in 1946. The business owned 46 licensed houses, all but two of which were in the Greater London area. The Chef & Brewer brand was familiar throughout London by the 1950s.

Levy & Franks operated 50 pubs and eleven delicatessens by 1962.

Levy & Franks entered into financial difficulties due to high warehouse and head office costs, and the directors approached Grand Metropolitan, a hotels and catering concern, who acquired the business for £2 million in 1966.

Chef & Brewer was acquired by Scottish & Newcastle, a large British brewer, in 1993.

Chef & Brewer was sold to Spirit Group, a pub company, in 2004.

Greene King, a large British brewer, acquired Spirit Group in 2014. The Chef & Brewer chain operated over 140 outlets as of 2019.

Hospitality

Winning dinners: John Pearce restaurants

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John Pearce pioneered low-cost restaurants in Victorian London.

John Pearce enters into the catering trade
John Pearce (1847 – 1930) was born into humble circumstances in Hoxton, London. His Welsh mother’s strict Baptist faith was to have a lasting influence upon him. His father, a hatter, died when he was young, so from the age of nine he had to earn a living.

Pearce became an apprentice porter in Covent Garden. He would portray this period of his life as a miserable one, a Dickensian tale of “child slavery” where he was “the absolute property of his master”. He determined to establish his independence at the first possible opportunity.

Pearce recognised the difficulty that labourers had in procuring good food early in the morning. In 1866 he hired a costermonger’s barrow from which he sold coffee, bread and cakes. He would set up his stand from four o’clock in the morning on City Road.

After six months Pearce had saved enough money to build himself a stall, which he named the Gutter Hotel. Within a few years he was serving 2,000 customers every day. Pearce sold the Gutter Hotel for £200 in 1879.

Pearce enters into the restaurant trade
Pearce used the proceeds from his sale of the Gutter Hotel to buy the lease of 68 Aldersgate Street, London. He turned the premises into a working-class restaurant. The restaurant was self-service and offered a limited menu of steak puddings and jacket potatoes, which helped to keep costs low.

The restaurant trade increased, and soon sold as many as 600 steak puddings every day. An impoverished Ramsay MacDonald (1866 – 1937), later to become Prime Minister, was numbered among the customers at the restaurant.

Pearce leased two adjacent properties on Farringdon Road in 1882, where he sold as many as 1,200 steak puddings a day. Soon, 6,000 people were being served on a daily basis.

Shortly afterwards, Pearce partnered with Sir Edward Sullivan, Baronet (1822 – 1885), who provided the business with the capital to expand.

Pearce opened restaurants across London, and began to brand his outlets under the Pearce & Plenty name from 1883.

Pearce was a teetotaller, and offered his restaurants as alternatives to public houses and taverns. Pearce restaurants were one of the few places outside of public houses and hotels where women could get a meal. Despite this, he was never an idealist, but a hard-headed businessman.

John Pearce
John Pearce (1847 – 1930)

Pearce opened two British Tea Table outlets in the City of London, aimed at the lower middle class market, in 1892. Popular meals included eggs on toast and ham salad in summer, and soup, chops and steaks in the winter.

There were 22 Pearce & Plenty outlets and 24 British Tea Table outlets by 1896. Much of the food was prepared centrally at Farringdon Road, where 40 bakers were employed. Over 800 people were employed across the business, of whom almost half were women.

The business was incorporated under the name British Tea Table in 1897, with a nominal capital of £300,000. Assets of the business were valued at just over £225,000. Independent directors were nominated to the board.

Between 60,000 and 70,000 people were served every day by 1897. There were 64 shops and over 1,000 employees by 1898. Upwards of 100,000 meals were served every day by 1901.

Business declines, and Pearce forms J.P. Restaurants
The business peaked in 1903, after which profits began to decline. The board of directors investigated the decline in profitability in 1904, and concluded that a failure to update and modernise outlets was to blame. The competition had increased, and rivals such as J Lyons had made a greater effort in the décor of their tea shops. Also, food quality failed to match that of its rivals. Some outlets were rebranded as British Restaurants.

John Pearce resigned as a director in 1904, furious at the direction the company was taking. He founded a new company, J.P. Restaurants, in 1905.

33 out of a total of 70 outlets were loss-making by 1905. This number had risen to 48 by 1907.

It was alleged in John Bull magazine that the company resold leftover food from customer’s plates.

A committee of shareholders was appointed to investigate the affairs of the company in 1907. The board of directors all promptly resigned following the nomination of John Pearce to the committee.

The company was loss-making by 1908. That year the shareholders committee reported that many outlets were trading at a loss due to inefficient management and mistakes in policy.

The 32 outlets that remained profitable were sold to J.P. Restaurants for £28,000 in 1909. Five other outlets were divested separately. British Tea Table was liquidated in 1910.

J.P. Restaurants had 51 outlets around London by 1923.

johnpearcedining

Pearce established Associated Hotels, a low-cost hotels company, in London in 1925.

Sale of J.P. Restaurants and death of the founder
J.P. Restaurants was sold to the Aerated Bread Company, a large catering concern, in 1927. John Pearce was retained in a consultative capacity. The freehold production facilities on Farringdon Road were immediately closed down, with production transferred to the central ABC facility in Camden Town.

Following a stormy meeting, Pearce and his sons were forced to resign from the board of directors in 1930. Shortly afterwards John Pearce had a heart attack and died. He left an net personalty valued at £30,862.

Hospitality

Fortune’s buffets and rewards: Spiers & Pond

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Spiers & Pond was the first large-scale catering business in the world. The firm organised the first cricket test match between England and Australia. Spiers & Pond commissioned the Criterion Theatre, and helped to popularise dining in the West End of London.

Origins in Australia
Gold was discovered in Melbourne, Australia in the early 1850s. The booming economy attracted Felix William Spiers (1832 – 1911), the son of a London shipbroker, and Christopher Pond (1828 – 1881), a former printer’s apprentice from Camberwell in Surrey.

Spiers and Pond formed a partnership in 1858 and acquired the lease of the Cafe de Paris, adjacent to the Theatre Royal on Bourke Street, one of Melbourne’s principal thoroughfares.

The Cafe de Paris was elegantly decorated, with stained glass domes, palatial fittings and polished oak and rosewood flooring. Inspiration came from the finest French restaurants as well as Simpson’s on the Strand, London. The Illustrated London News declared in 1861, “there are few public dining rooms in the world superior to the cafe [de Paris]”.

Cafe de Paris, Melbourne, in 1862
Cafe de Paris, Melbourne, in 1862

The Cafe de Paris would frequently serve more than one thousand people a day. The pair of men complimented each other, with Pond acting as the charming mein host, and Spiers serving as the accountant. Pond had Bohemian tendencies, and cultivated the patronage of Melbourne’s acting and literary set.

Impressed by the large numbers of spectators at cricket matches, Spiers & Pond sponsored the first ever tour of an English national cricket team to Australia in 1861-2. Each player was paid £150 plus first class travel expenses. Spiers & Pond made a fortune from the venture.

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Spiers attempted to convince Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) to give a reading tour of Australia in 1862, but the author had to decline for health reasons.

Relocation to Britain
Spiers & Pond sold their Melbourne assets in early 1863 and relocated to Britain. They had noticed the poor state of railway catering in their homeland, and saw an opportunity for improvement. They secured a concession in a railway arch at the newly-opened Farringdon Street Station of the Metropolitan Railway, from where they sold buns and other ready goods. Spiers & Pond paid the railway company a proportion of their takings in lieu of a fixed rent, in order to ensure a mutual interest in the success of the venture.

Spiers & Pond had established concessions at several Metropolitan Railway stations by 1864. They won the catering contract for the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1865.

Christopher Pond (left) and Felix William Spiers (right)
Christopher Pond (left) and Felix William Spiers (right)

Two elegant London restaurants were opened in 1866, one at Ludgate Hill Station and another at Victoria Station. The Ludgate restaurant became a popular haunt for bohemian and literary types. Charles Dickens praised it as one of the first places in the country where the railway traveller could get “wholesome food, decently served”.

Spiers & Pond employed around 800 people by 1867, and operated 21 refreshment bars, including 18 on railways. Spiers & Pond claimed to be the first to popularise low-cost wine in Britain.

Spiers & Pond helped to popularise dining in the West End. They took over the Gaiety restaurant in 1869, next to the famous theatre on the Strand, which became one of the most popular restaurants in London. They built the Criterion restaurant and Criterion Theatre in 1873.

Spiers & Pond became well-known for hiring attractive barmaids. Dickens described the women in their employ as “bright-eyed, cheerfully obliging nymphs”, whose beauty helped to draw in male patrons. George Augustus Sala (1828 – 1895) pointed out their “fine physiques”.

Spiers & Pond operated refreshment rooms at over 100 railway stations on nine different railway lines by 1873. The railway bars sold 8,000 gallons of sherry every week.

The two partners attributed their success to “capital, enterprise [and] experience”. Before long, Spiers & Pond held the catering contracts for every major railway line, supplied from a large central depot at Ludgate Hill. Spiers & Pond also diversified into the general store business, and established a mail-order catalogue.

Spiers & Pond acquired numerous hotels from 1879 onwards, including the Victoria Hotel in Manchester (lease bought for £33,000 in 1891) and Bailey’s Hotel on Gloucester Road (1894).

When Pond died in 1881 he was regarded even in America as “probably the greatest caterer in the world”. It was estimated that the enterprise could feed 200,000 to 300,000 people every day. Pond’s personal estate was valued at over £215,000.

Incorporation, increased competition and decline in profitability
Shortly after Pond’s death, Spiers & Pond was incorporated with a capital of £500,000.

Spiers & Pond operated 219 refreshment rooms at railway stations by 1886. There were 6,000 employees by 1891, including 1,000 women. Spiers & Pond had a share capital of £600,000 and catering contracts with 15 railway lines by 1899.

The railways noted the profitable nature of the Spiers & Pond refreshment rooms, and some began to take their catering concessions in-house . Meanwhile, competition intensified as J Lyons entered the railway catering market. As a result, Spiers & Pond began to increasingly focus on its hotels estate.

The Ludgate Hill Station restaurant was sold to J Lyons in 1905.

Suffering from ill health, Spiers retired to Paris in 1905. He died with an estate valued at over £150,000 in 1911.

Following reduced profits, the directors stepped aside in 1906 and handed management of the company to a shareholder committee.

An article in John Bull characterised the business as, “slowly but surely dying from bad management in its broadest sense. There is no one, strong, guiding hand at the head of it. It lacks energy, initiative, due recognition of the wants, the legitimate requirements, of the public”. The article went on to add that, “the chairman, Mr Javal … no longer gives the business the close and constant attention which it requires. He is seldom at the office more than three days a week, and then not for many hours, nor has he an efficient deputy.”

Due to a reduction in the value of licensed properties, Spiers & Pond reduced its capital from £1.2 million to £720,000 in 1907.

Spiers & Pond directors were forced to deny rumours that J Lyons planned to takeover the company in 1911.

A new board of directors and managing director were appointed in 1913. Due to difficult trading and labour shortages caused by the war, as well as recent licensing legislation, Spiers & Pond entered into receivership in 1916. Unprofitable properties were divested, and the company re-emerged in a stronger position.

The Criterion Theatre and Restaurant was sold to Charles E Cottier in 1917.

Spiers & Pond was again forced to deny rumours that it was a takeover target in 1922.

The Times stated that Spiers & Pond were, “almost the only contractors for dining-car services on the English railways” in 1925.

The Aerated Bread Company, which had recently acquired a string of catering companies, made a takeover offer for Spiers & Pond in 1928. Spiers & Pond directors, who controlled the company’s votes, rejected the bid, although the two companies maintained a friendly working relationship.

Spiers & Pond acquired the Grand Hotel in Scarborough, assessed by the Yorkshire Evening Post as “one of the finest hotel properties in the country”, in 1928. The Grand Hotel in Brighton was acquired in 1929.

The Southern Railway contract was lost after 40 years in 1930, following a lower bid from a rival.

The Queen’s Hotel in Eastbourne was acquired in 1937.

Spiers & Pond was subject to a hostile takeover by Chicken Inns, a successful fast food operator, in 1957. Leslie Jackson, the managing director of Chicken Inns, described the business as “almost moribund”, but “stuffed with underutilised assets”.

The board of directors were immediately dismissed. A chain of tobacconists’ shops was divested.

Acquisition of Spiers & Pond
Spiers & Pond was acquired by Express Dairy for £5.5 million in 1960. It was a friendly takeover, approved by the directors who retained the majority of voting shares. Spiers & Pond was a leading hotelier in Britain with 13 hotels, as well as Chicken Inn outlets and 18 restaurants.

Spiers & Pond acquired the Royal Hotel in Scarborough in 1964. The company built the Viking Hotel in York for £850,000 in 1968.

Express Dairy was acquired by Grand Metropolitan in 1969. Spiers & Pond was absorbed into the Grand Metropolitan network of hotels.

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.

Drink, Food, Hospitality, Tea

Lyons led by donkeys: the fall of a British empire (1945 – present)

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Part I, about the early history of J Lyons, can be found here.

During the post-war period, J Lyons developed the first business computer in the world. It introduced household-name brands such as Ready Brek, Maryland Cookies and Wimpy Hamburger.

Growth and continued success of J Lyons
J Lyons was the largest catering company in the world, with a capital of £10 million and exports to fifty countries. There were 33,000 employees and 230 tea shops in 1954.

The Corner House restaurants and hotels alone employed over 4,000 workers in 1951. On normal Bank Holidays the Corner Houses could expect to serve 250,000 meals.

Lyons was a global leader in sales of packaged tea. Lyons had a weekly production of seven million buns, 1.25 million lbs of bread and 12.5 million pieces of confectionery.

Clerical work became so extensive that J Lyons determined to build the first business computer in the world. Based on a computer at Harvard University, Lyons engineers introduced LEO (Lyons Electronic Office), after six years of development in 1954. Large computers had previously only been used for military or scientific purposes. The 5,000 sq ft computer could perform the work of 300 clerks working at top speed, with fewer mistakes.

Lyons introduced the American-style hamburger chain to Britain when it opened a Wimpy franchise in the basement of a Lyons tea shop on 277 Oxford Street in May 1954. There were 1,100 Wimpy outlets in 34 countries by 1973.

Lyons Pure Ground Coffee was the highest selling coffee in Britain in 1953. Lyons launched its standard market teabag brand, Quick Brew, in 1955.

A “Big Four” held 70 percent of the British tea market by 1956. Lyons held second place behind Brooke Bond.

Maryland Cookies were introduced from 1956. The company launched Ready Brek instant porridge in 1957, to outstanding success.

J Lyons was the third-largest soft drink producer in Britain by 1960. Rose Kia-Ora, a joint venture with Schweppes, held nearly half of the squash market.

Lyons sold its confectionery subsidiary to Callard & Bowser in 1961. With the growth of television advertising, middle-size sweet manufacturers were forced to consolidate in order to reach a scale capable of launching their own campaigns.

Lyons retired most of its tea distribution vans from 1962. The vans had delivered to independent grocers throughout the country. The company had reasoned that business was transferring towards the supermarkets. The decision was premature however, and allowed rival Brooke Bond to increase its market share at the expense of Lyons.

Lyons acquired Eldorado of Liverpool, the fourth largest ice cream manufacturer in Britain, in 1963, and rebranded its ice cream business as Lyons Maid. The takeover took its share of the ice cream market to 34 percent, and Lyons was the second largest ice cream manufacturer in Britain (after Wall’s) throughout much of the twentieth century. The Zoom rocket shaped lolly was introduced in 1963. The FAB ice lolly was introduced in 1967. The Greenford ice cream factory was the second largest in the world by 1973.

The computer division required extensive capitalisation, so it was sold to English Electric in 1964.

Lyons had become the biggest supplier of pre-packaged cakes in Britain by 1966, and was the clear market leader with a 28 percent market share.

Lyons held more than two thirds of the packaged ground coffee market in 1966.

Throughout the 1960s J Lyons was joint third in the British tea market alongside Typhoo, with around 15 percent market share, behind Brooke Bond and the Co-operative Wholesale Society.

Lyons was probably the largest business in catering sales and supplies in Britain by 1969.

Lyons enters into decline
Lyons had seen its market share in tea decline to 13 percent by 1970, and it was far from the brand leader it once was. Quick Brew had an eight percent share of the popular tea market. It was strongest in the South of England, especially London, where it held 17 percent of the market. By this time Horniman and Black & Green had been positioned as the company’s premium tea brands. Horniman was the company’s biggest tea seller in South Wales, and Black & Green was strong in Manchester and the North West.

Lyons hotels held over 6,000 beds in 1970.

It was argued in The Spectator in 1968 that “You can grade the Lyons properties into four classes — redundant, non-profitable, underdeveloped — and Cadby Hall [the production centre].” The number of tea rooms had declined to 120 by 1969, and many were loss-making. The Coventry Street Corner House was closed in 1970. Between 1970 and 1972 the remaining tea rooms were converted into Jolyon Restaurants.

Cadby Hall was closed in 1972, with production relocated to Yorkshire and Northamptonshire. Nearly 3,000 staff were affected.

Lyons acquired Tetley Tea for £23 million in 1972. This gave Lyons the second highest market share for tea in both the British and American markets. In Britain Lyons now had 17 percent of the tea market, behind Brooke Bond on 40 percent.

A 25 percent stake in Fox’s Biscuits of Batley was acquired in 1972.

Baskin Robbins, the ice cream manufacturer with 1,600 stores in America, was acquired for £16 million in 1973.

Lyons encountered financial difficulties following the global oil crisis of 1973. They had borrowed £250 million to finance acquisitions in the early 1970s, mostly from non-British sources. Foreign loan repayments became expensive as the value of sterling fell. As a result, the company began to rapidly divest its core assets just to meet its liabilities.

J Lyons dropped from the top 100 companies in Britain by market capitalization in 1974. The company had a capitalization of £39.5 million and a turnover of £249 million in 1975.

The tearooms and corner houses fell prey to the more trendy coffee bars of Charles Forte, as well as the increasing appeal of fast food and ethnic cuisine. The last tea shop closed in 1976.

The 35 British hotels (with the exception of Tower Hotel) were sold to Forte’s Trust House Forte for £27.6 million, or just £4,000 per room, in 1976. Forte was transformed from the largest hotel operator in Britain, to probably the largest in the world. Forte promptly recouped £11 million in a year by cutting costs. The Economist described the deal as “phenomenally successful” for Forte, who acquired the hotels at a “knock-down price”.

Wimpy, with 676 UK outlets, was sold off to United Biscuits for £7 million in 1976.

The Salmon and Gluckstein families were forced to relinquish voting control over Lyons in 1976. By allowing ordinary shareholders to have votes, they hoped to acquire more capital, which was desperately needed. Previously the families had held six to seven percent of company equity but 61 percent of voting shares. By this time Lyons had a market capitalization of  over £40 million and sales of £650 million.

Lyons is acquired by Allied Breweries, and the businesses are divested
Lyons was subject to a friendly takeover by Allied Breweries which valued the company at £64 million in 1978. The merged entity was known as Allied Lyons. The Cadby Hall sites were demolished in 1983.

The remnant Lyons food businesses were sold off throughout the early to mid 1990s.

Ready Brek was sold to Weetabix in 1990.

Lyons Maid had been loss-making for several years, mainly due to increased competition following the entrance of Mars into the ice cream market. It was sold to Clarke Foods for £12 million in 1991. There were 800 employees in Greenford, Middlesex and Liverpool. Clarke Foods was acquired by Nestle in 1992.

In 1994 the Lyons coffee businesses were divested: ground coffee to Paulig of Finland and instant coffee to Philip Morris.

After acquiring Pedro Domecq in 1994, Allied Lyons renamed itself to Allied Domecq.

Lyons biscuits of Blackpool, with a staff of 780, was sold to Hillsdown Holdings in 1994.

Lyons Cakes was sold to Tomkins of America for £35 million in 1995. The business employed 1,700 people in Britain and Ireland. Meanwhile, the Tetley Tea business was subject to a management buyout, valued at £190 million.

Lyons Quick Brew and Red Label teas were still available in Britain until relatively recently. Lyons remains the highest-selling tea brand in Ireland, with over a third of the market. Lyons Maid ice cream has been rebranded as Nestle. Lyons brand cakes, biscuits and freshly ground coffee are still sold, although without the presence they once had.

Lyons’ major weakness was nepotism. As late as the 1950s, the board was populated exclusively by family members. The Financial Times ran a headline, “Too much Salmon is bad for Lyons”. A non-family member chairman was not elected until 1977. Although a public company, the majority of voting shares were controlled by the founding families until 1976. But by then, it was too late to save the company extant.

Hospitality

Game for a go: Dave & Buster’s

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Bass was one of the largest hospitality companies in mid-1990s Britain. The company had successfully introduced popular chain pubs such as All Bar One and O’Neills earlier in the decade.

Dave & Buster’s was a burger bar/video game arcade hybrid. Bass opened its first D&B in Solihull in the West Midlands in 1997. A second outlet was opened in Bristol in 1998 at a cost of £12 million. The outlets were large (40,000 to 60,000 square feet) and located in out of town locations.

A third outlet was scheduled to open in Thurrock, Essex, but never did. Bass had also explored sites in Croydon and Leeds.

Bass did not invent the D&B concept, and merely held the UK franchise. Bass withdrew from its franchise agreement in 2000 and closed the two outlets. The chain still exists in its native America.

Hospitality

Munch time: a history of Happy Eater

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Little Chef dominated roadside catering in Britain, and inspired a rival, Happy Eater, which it was later allowed to acquire.

Happy Eater was established by Michael Pickard in 1973. Michael Pickard had managed Little Chef, but had been dismissed, supposedly following a personality clash with its owner, Sir Charles Forte.

Pickard established a rival to Little Chef in May 1973 with a 60-seat Happy Eater outlet at Ripley, Surrey. Two further sites were opened that year, one near Ashford in Kent and one near Crawley in West Sussex.

The business drew inspiration from the Howard Johnson’s chain of restaurants in the United States. Happy Eater was the first roadside restaurant chain in Britain to principally target the family market. Happy Eater outlets had children’s menus and baby-feeding facilities as well as superior play area facilities compared to Little Chef, both inside and outside.

By 1980 there were 17 restaurants, and the company needed expansion capital. Courage, the national brewer, acquired a 52.7 percent stake.

The company had a turnover of £8 million in 1983-4, which rose to £11.8 million for 1984-5. By 1986 there were 61 outlets and the company employed 1,430 people.

The majority of outlets were situated in South East England, East Anglia, the Midlands and along the A1. In 1986 only one outlet was franchised, the rest being owned or leased. Outlets could seat between 70 and 110 diners.

In 1987 the chain was acquired by Trust House Forte, the owners of Little Chef, for £14.2 million. In 1988 the chain peaked with 90 outlets.

The Prime Minister, John Major, notably dined at a Happy Eater in 1991. For this he was mocked by some in the media as an uncivilised buffoon, but others praised his demonstration of the common touch.

In 1995 the chain was described in The Observer, The Guardian and Scotland on Sunday as “downmarket”.

The first six months of 1995 saw 14 outlets rebranded as Little Chef, leaving fewer than 50 Happy Eaters remaining.

In 1996 Little Chef was acquired by Granada, a conglomerate which operated motorway service stations. In October 1996 it was announced that all remaining Happy Eaters would either be converted or closed down. The brand ceased to trade in 1998.

Drink, Food, Hospitality, Retail, Tea

Roaring trade: a history of J Lyons (1894 – 1945)

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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 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.

Part II of this post can be found here.

Hospitality

Movers and shakers: a history of Burger King in the UK

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Burger King is one of the largest fast food chains in Britain. Burger King entered the UK market in 1974 but struggled to develop scale until it was acquired by Grand Metropolitan in 1989. Grand Metropolitan purchased the Wimpy hamburger chain and converted its outlets to the Burger King fascia. Later expansion came when Granada began to convert its roadside Little Chef branches to Burger King from 1996.

Early expansion in the UK
Burger King was established in Florida in 1953. Burger King was the third-largest fast food chain in the world by the 1970s, behind only McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

McDonald’s had entered the British market in 1974 and Burger King soon followed, with its first outlet established on Coventry Street in central London from 1976.

Burger King planned to aim at a higher quality market than McDonald’s. Its range of products included the Whopper burger as well as fries, milkshakes and apple pies.

Burger King established its first restaurant outside London in Reading, Berkshire, in 1982, to take its total number of outlets to nine.

One of the earliest franchisees was Management Agency and Music, a record company co-owned by singers Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck.

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Burger King UK suffered from heavy losses in its early stages. The European operations headquarters were relocated from Zurich in Switzerland to London in 1983.

Expansion continued at a slow but steady rate: there were 14 outlets, including three drive-through locations, by 1987.

Burger King acquired eight Quick hamburger sites from Whitbread for around £7 million in 1988.

Wimpy acquisition and further expansion
Like many of the American fast food chains, Burger King struggled to succeed in the UK until it found a British partner. Burger King’s American parent company was acquired by the London-based hospitality company Grand Metropolitan in 1989.

Grand Metropolitan acquired the British-based Wimpy Hamburger business, and converted 150 counter-service Wimpy outlets to the Burger King fascia. With 180 outlets, Burger King now had scale in Britain, which offered significant economies for the business.

Burger King offered faster service, a wider product range, and better training for staff than Wimpy.

Burger King had 250 restaurants across Britain by 1994. New sites were developed at out of town locations.

Roadside services operator Granada introduced Burger King branches at its 24 sites in 1995. Granada discovered that converting a Little Chef into a Burger King had the potential to double sales.

Burger King had 465 outlets in the UK by 1997. The company held 15 percent of the British burger restaurant market by 1999. Following this period of expansion, the chain was to effectively stagnate for the next twenty years.

Burger King was implied in the horsemeat scandal of 2013, when its own investigation revealed that “trace amounts” of horse DNA were discovered in meat from its supplier in Ireland. The company immediately terminated its contract with the supplier.

Bridgepoint and Caspian Group acquired Burger King UK in 2017.

There are 530 Burger King outlets in the UK in 2021, with the vast majority operated by franchisees.

Burger King UK announced plans to list on the London Stock Exchange with a value of £600 million in 2021.