Fortune’s buffets and rewards: Spiers & Pond

June 30, 2015 T Farrell Leave a comment

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]”.

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)

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

June 30, 2015 T Farrell 2 Comments

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

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.

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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

June 24, 2015 T Farrell Leave a comment

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.

Retail, Spreads & sauces

Cash cow: Maypole Dairy

May 24, 2015 T Farrell 4 Comments

Maypole Dairy was easily the largest retailer in Britain by 1913.

The Watson brothers and George Jackson
George Watson (1861 – 1930), Charles Henry Watson (1863 – 1927) and John Alfred Watson (1865 – 1931), were brothers born just outside Coventry to a prosperous farming family. They served as apprentices and later as assistants to George Jackson, a Birmingham dairy merchant.

Jackson had pioneered the sale of pure dairy butter at affordable prices by importing the product directly from Danish farmers. Jackson sold 30,000 tons of butter every year by 1893, and was the largest retailer of butter in the world.

Establishment of Maypole Dairy
Jackson’s strong reputation for butter meant that he was reluctant to branch out into margarine, which although gaining in popularity, was hampered by a downmarket image. However George Watson was free to take the chance, and he established the Maypole Dairy Company, with a margarine shop in Wolverhampton, from 1887. He was soon joined by his brothers, and outlets were opened across the Midlands. The shops also began to sell cheese and butter.

Maypole Dairy was a high volume, low margin business, and outlets were concentrated in working class areas.

Charles Watson was largely responsible for the expansion of the Maypole chain into Lancashire and Yorkshire.

George Watson introduced a profit-sharing scheme for management from 1890. Shortly afterwards, in a pioneering move, the scheme was extended to all employees.

Maypole Dairy was the largest retailer of margarine in Britain by 1895. The business had 60 shops, eight creameries in Ireland and one in England, and purchasing offices in Denmark and Sweden.

Maypole merges with George Jackson
Maypole and George Jackson underwent a merger in 1898, and the company was incorporated with a share capital of £1 million. George Watson became chairman. The company had 185 retail shops and 17 creameries.

Maypole acquired a margarine factory in Godley, Manchester, from Otto Monsted Ltd, a Danish company, in 1902. It was capable of producing 200 tons of margarine every week.

Maypole had 560 retail shops by 1908, and was the largest retailer of tea, butter and margarine in the United Kingdom.

maypoles-dairy-shop-in-lynn-stret_large — A Maypole Dairy Store in Hartlepool

Maypole reported a net profit of over £550,000 (£425 million in 2015) in 1912, of which all but £50,000 was distributed among shareholders as a 212.5% dividend.* By this time there were 712 stores across the United Kingdom, and the leading lines were margarine and tea. That year, George Watson was appointed a baronet.

Maypole was the largest retail chain in Britain by a substantial margin by 1913, with over 800 shops.

Maypole, and the Dutch producers Jergens and Van den Bergh produced most of the margarine sold in Britain, with Maypole producing almost as much as the other two combined by 1913.

The Manchester margarine factory was sold to Lever Brothers in 1914.

Maypole acquired Otto Monsted’s margarine factory in Southall, Middlesex, and an edible oils refinery in Erith, South East London in 1915. The Southall factory covered 22,500 square yards, employed around 650 people and was the largest margarine factory in the world. It had a weekly output of 700 tons of margarine.

Maypole margarine differed from competitors in that it was produced from tropical nuts and seeds rather than animal fats. Maypole established a groundnut operation in West Africa to provide raw material for margarine production in 1915. 25,000 to 30,000 tons of groundnuts were produced annually by 1919.

Maypole dominated the sale and manufacture of margarine in the United Kingdom, with a 50 percent market share by 1918. The Southall site produced over 2,000 tons a week. Margarine accounted for 85 percent of Maypole sales.

maypoleinterior — The interior of a Maypole Dairy shop

Acquisition by Home & Colonial
Maypole capital amounted to £3 million (equivalent to just under £1 billion in 2015) in 1919. Turnover exceeded £36.5 million (£13.8 billion in 2015) in 1921.

However shortly afterwards the company began to struggle with increased Dutch competition and the failure of its West African business. Six directors retired in 1924, including the chairman, George Watson, and they sold their stakes to Home & Colonial. Now the majority owner, Home & Colonial was itself controlled by Jurgens.

Maypole increased its product lines to include jam, marmalade and lard from 1925. In 1928 biscuits were added, and cheese was re-introduced in packaged form.

Maypole is absorbed into Unilever
Maypole had over 1,040 retail outlets and a total capitalisation of over £9 million by 1929. That year, Jurgens and Van den Bergh merged with Lever Brothers of Britain to form Unilever. Maypole was now contractually obliged to purchase all of its margarine from Unilever. The Maypole manufacturing site at Southall was rendered redundant by the Unilever purchase, and was re-appropriated for the production of Wall’s sausages and ice cream. The Erith refinery was also closed.

Unilever created a holding company for its grocery chains; Lipton, Home & Colonial and Maypole Dairy, called Allied Suppliers, in 1930. Allied Suppliers had a capital of £13.3 million, and was the largest grocery retailer in the world. Each retail company continued to be run independently, but there was co-operation in wholesale acquisitions and distribution.

George Watson died in 1930, leaving an estate valued at over £2 million (about £805 million in 2015).

Maypole’s West African venture was sold to the United Africa Company, which was controlled by Unilever, in 1931.

Maypole sold over 200,000 eggs in 1938.

There were 977 Maypole stores and 6,334 employees in 1939. Rivals such as Tesco, which utilised bulk purchasing from suppliers, began to challenge the vertical integration model practised by Maypole.

By 1943 all but two company directors, and practically all senior executives, were men who had started at the bottom ranks of the company and worked their way up.

Faced with continued rationing after the war, Maypole began to extend its product range to include additional staples such as bacon from 1947.

The Maypole name is phased out
The independent management of Maypole ended in 1964. The Maypole name was phased out in the 1970s, when increased competition from supermarkets saw Allied Suppliers decide to concentrate on their Home & Colonial brand. Allied Suppliers eventually morphed into Safeway (UK), and the rights to the Maypole brand are now owned by Morrisons Supermarkets.

Unilever continued to hold a 30 percent share of the global spreads market, until the divested their spreads unit in 2017.

* Currency conversions are calculated by measuring wealth relative to the total output of the economy at the time. All calculations are from measuringworth.com

Food, Retail

Meat the House of Vestey

April 26, 2015 T Farrell Leave a comment

Vestey Brothers was the largest meat business in the world. The business controlled one third of the refrigerated storage capacity in Britain and two thirds of multiple butchers shops. It accounted for 20 percent of all meat imported into Britain. The Vesteys became the second wealthiest family in Britain after the Royals.

Origins and early growth
William Vestey (1859 – 1940) and Edmund Hoyle Vestey (1866 – 1954) were born to Samuel Vestey, a Liverpool provisions merchant. The two brothers began their commercial lives as office boys working for their father.

William Vestey was sent to Chicago, the centre of the North American meatpacking trade, to scout for opportunities in 1876. He was surprised at the amount of meat that was wasted. He decided to can the surplus meat as corned beef and export it to Britain.

William Vestey relocated to Argentina and began to export frozen partridges from 1890. Later, beef and mutton were added. Being among the first to realise the potential of refrigeration gave Vestey Brothers a competitive advantage against its rivals.

Vestey Brothers established Union Cold Storage as a subsidiary to manage their meatpacking and distribution network from 1897.

Vestey Brothers began to import eggs and chicken from China from 1906. Eggs had previously had poor availability, and Vestey’s low-cost frozen egg mix was to be a major factor in the subsequent growth of catering companies such as J Lyons.

Vestey established Blue Star Lines, a fleet of refrigerated vessels, with two second-hand steamers, in 1909.

The First World War
The business grew rapidly during the First World War, following a surge in meat prices.

Vestey Brothers acquired ranches and freezing works in Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela between 1913 and 1920.

Blackfriars Lighterage & Cartage Co was acquired in 1914, to give the company full control of its distribution in London.

Six million acres of land in the Australian interior were acquired during the First World War.

The Vesteys relocated their business headquarters from Britain to Buenos Aires in 1915 in order to avoid income tax, which had been increased in order to fund the war in Europe.

Vestey Brothers provided cold storage facilities free of charge for British supplies at Havre, Boulogne and Dunkirk during the First World War.

Inter-war period
Vestey Brothers had operations all over the world, and a capital of over £20 million by 1919. It was one of the largest British industrial concerns, and larger than all the other British freezing and cold storage companies combined. In meat-packing, only the American concerns of Armour and Swift were larger.

Vestey acquired £7 million of beef from the British government in a single deal in 1920.

Eastmans, with a chain of butchers shops in Britain, was acquired in 1920.

Union Cold Storage was the largest cold storage company in the world by 1920, with a share capital of £4,780,000 and a storage capacity of over ten million cubic feet. The Blue Star Line was the largest refrigerated fleet in the world.

William and Edmund became so rich that they didn’t live off the interest of their wealth, but the interest of the interest. William was raised to the peerage in 1922.

Union Cold Storage spent £4 million to acquire the subsidiaries of the Western United Investment Company in 1923. This included the British & Argentine Meat Company, James Nelson & Sons and Fletcher’s butchers shops.

Vestey Brothers was the largest meat business in the world by 1923.

Vestey Brothers acquired the Liebig company’s freezing facility at Fray Bentos in Uruguay in 1924.

Vestey Brothers was the largest retailer of meat in the world by 1925, with a chain of 2,035 butchers shops in Britain. Vestey was responsible for 25 percent of the meat that was exported from South America.

Union Cold Storage employed over 30,000 people, with a capital of £9.6 million, in 1925. It had over 450,000 cattle on ranches in Australia, South America and South Africa. The company handled 20 percent of Britain’s frozen meat imports, and operated a third of the country’s cold storage capacity.

Union Cold Storage was the tenth largest British public company by 1926.

Vestey Brothers opened a new refrigeration plant in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1927. With an annual capacity of 1.5 million cattle and 2.5 million sheep, it ranked among the largest in the world. The plant employed 3,000 people.

Vestey Brothers acquired William Angliss & Co, the largest meat business in Australia, in 1934.

Blue Star Lines had grown to include a fleet of around forty vessels by 1939.

Deaths of the founders
William Vestey conservatively valued Vestey Brothers at over £90 million in 1940. The family became the richest in Britain after the Royals.

William Vestey died in 1940, and was remembered as a modest and benevolent man. During the height of the Blitz he had continued to put in a full working day in London.

Edmund Vestey never retired. He collapsed at his office desk in 1954 and died the following day. Remembered as a shy and reticent man, he left an estate valued at £737,738.

The latter half of the twentieth century
The company retained its position throughout much of the rest of the century. In 1968 it was still the largest cold storage operator in Britain, and had also become a leading supplier of chicken. It remained on par in terms of scale with Armour and Swift.

A legal tax avoidance scheme operated by the Vestey family was revealed in 1980, to public outrage.

Vestey Brothers was considered to be the largest privately owned multinational in the world in the 1980s. It was the largest retailer of meat in the world.

Vestey sold off five of its seven North Australian ranches in 1984. Before the sale it had been the largest private landowner in Australia. After the sale it still raised about ten percent of all cattle in the country.

Speculation on the property market saw Union Cold Storage hampered by short term debt of £423 million by 1991.

Vestey announced it would close 600 of its 1,000 Dewhurst butchers shops in 1992. The business had been adversely affected by the growth of the supermarket chains.

Both Dewhursts and Union Cold Storage entered into administration in 1995. 213 of the Dewhurst shops were saved by a management buyout. The remnant Australian estates were sold off in 1996. The Blue Star Line was sold to P&O Nedlloyd for £60 million in 1998. The sale of the fleet allowed the group to finally re-emerge free of debt.

Vestey Group continues to trade today as a smaller organisation, focused on the sourcing, distribution and processing of meat. The Vestey family are still wealthy: they ranked 160th on the Sunday Times Rich List in 2015, with an estimated fortune of £700 million. Actor Tom Hiddleston is a direct descendant of Edmund Vestey.

Tea

A history of the largest tea companies in Britain

April 11, 2015 T Farrell Leave a comment

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.

Tea

A potted history of Twining & Co

April 8, 2015 T Farrell Leave a comment

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.

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.

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.

Tea

Plain sailing: Lipton tea

March 26, 2015 T Farrell Leave a comment

Lipton is the highest-selling tea in the world, with distribution in 110 countries.

Thomas Lipton introduces a new packaged tea blend
Thomas Lipton (1846 – 1931) was born in Glasgow to a working class family. He established a chain of grocery stores.

Lipton believed that if he could lower the price of tea he could increase sales among the working classes. He acquired thousands of acres of cut-price tea plantations in the south of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1890. By sourcing his own tea Lipton was able to cut out the middleman, and pass on the savings to the customer.

Lipton claimed to have the largest sale of any tea in the world “beyond doubt” by 1897, and millions of people drank his tea every day. Over one million packets of Lipton tea were sold in Britain every week.

Thomas Lipton paid a record-breaking £35,000 duty on a week’s purchase of tea in 1897. This was over half the average for the total weekly tea market, which Lipton now claimed to dominate. By this time his tea enjoyed a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria (1819 – 1901). Several thousand workers were employed on his Ceylon plantations.

Lipton tea was blended differently for various regions of Britain in order to best suit the local water.

Lipton tea received Royal Warrants from Edward VII (1841 – 1910) and George V (1865 – 1936).

Lipton claimed to be the largest tea distributors, manufacturers and retailers of food products in the world by 1924.

The company had entered into difficulty by 1926. The business had outgrown the overworked Thomas Lipton, but he refused to take advice from his board of directors. He was forced to resign from the company he had built in 1927, and his stake was acquired for £60,000.

Thomas Lipton died in 1931. He left a British estate valued at over £1.4 million, and an American estate valued at £757,000.

Lipton is acquired by Home & Colonial
Lipton was acquired by Home & Colonial, a large grocery chain, in 1931.

Lipton divested some of its plantations in Ceylon in 1944, but retained 3,400 acres of high quality tea estates.

The large supermarket chains grew in influence from the 1950s, and they were reluctant to stock tea from a rival grocery business. Lipton tea sales in Britain declined and never recovered, and the company instead concentrated on the overseas tea market.

Lipton had total coverage of the Indian market by 1968. The company built a new fully-automated factory of over 175,000 sq ft. It was one of the largest tea packing and blending factories in the world.

Lipton tea was sold in 156 countries by 1969, and packed in 29 factories. Lipton was the second largest tea business in the world.

Unilever acquires Lipton
The Lipton tea interests were acquired by Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant, for £18.5 million in 1972. By this time Lipton was a relatively small player in the British tea market, and was outsold by two Brooke Bond brands (PG Tips and Dividend), as well as Tetley, J Lyons, Typhoo and the Co-operative Wholesale Society.

Lipton enjoyed great success in the United States, with 50 percent of the market by 1975.

All Lipton tea was packed and blended at a factory in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, by 1979. It was the largest tagged tea bag factory in Europe. Lipton was awarded the Queen’s Award For Export that year.

Lipton Yellow Label was the highest selling tea in the world, a blend of Ceylon, India and other tea leaves. Lipton exported more tea to more countries (over 120) than any other company by 1980.

The Leighton Buzzard factory was closed in 1999, and production was relocated to a site in Dubai. The Dubai site is now the largest tea factory in the world.

Unilever sold its tea interests, excluding its businesses in India, Nepal and Indonesia, and the ready to drink Lipton business, to CVC Capital for £3.8 billion in 2021.

Tea

So long, Ceylon: Mazawattee Tea Co

March 26, 2015 T Farrell 2 Comments

Mazawattee was the highest selling brand of tea in the world.

John Densham & Sons introduce Mazawattee Tea
John Boon Densham (1815 – 1886) was a Plymouth chemist. He relocated to Croydon in the 1860s. With a Mr C Lees he entered the wholesale tea business to form Lees & Densham. The business was based at Philpott Lane, where the bulk of Britain’s tea auctions took place.

Lees divested his stake in 1870. Densham’s three sons entered the business, and the firm began trading as John Densham & Sons. With premises at Eastcheap in London, the firm grew to become a sizeable concern. By the 1880s they had also established a warehouse in Manchester.

Edward Densham (1842 – 1912), the eldest son of the founder, became the head of the business. He was a kindly and popular man.

John Densham & Sons introduced the Mazawattee Tea blend in 1886. It was made entirely from Ceylon leaves, which were marketed as superior to the standard Chinese leaves. The trademark was registered the following year.

Packaged tea had been introduced by John Horniman in the 1840s, but most tea at this time was still sold loose from grocers’ shops. Packaged tea promised a consistent product, and was a vouch for purity from contamination.

Mazawattee Tea becomes a market leader
Over 14 million packets of Mazawattee tea were sold every year through 5,000 outlets by 1892. By this time sales had overtaken those of Horniman, who had led the market since at least the 1860s.

A distinctive promotional campaign saw a Mazawattee Tea cart drawn through London by zebras

Edward Densham retired as head of the business in 1892. His two brothers, John Lane Densham (1853 – 1918) and Benjamin Densham (1847 – 1929), were appointed as joint managing directors.

A seven storey factory had been erected at Tower Hill, London by 1894.

The Mazawattee Tea Company was formed with a valuation of £550,000 (about £66 million in 2015) in 1896. Mazawattee tea was the largest tea brand in the world.

Mazawattee was the largest wholesale tea business in the world by 1898. In one single auction the company had to pay the largest ever tea duty, £63,147, after it acquired 1,687 tons of tea.

In 1900 Mazawattee again broke the record for the highest duty paid on tea (£85,862 in 1900), when they acquired over 5 million lbs of the good in a single transaction.

Benjamin Densham retired in 1901.

A new £400,000 factory was established at New Cross in 1901. It was the largest and best equipped tea processing plant in the world. The new site also allowed the company to move into the manufacture of cocoa and chocolate confectionery. Over 1,000 workers were employed across a four acre site.

In 1901 the company had a share capital of £800,000 (around £88 million in 2015). By 1902 this had risen to £1 million, with assets excluding goodwill valued at over £650,000.

By 1905 millions of people drank Mazawattee tea every day, and the company had over 15,000 outlets in the United Kingdom.

Financial struggles and demise of the brand
By 1900 the J Lyons tea shop chain had expanded to over 50 outlets. In 1904 the Mazawattee board decided to open 500 small shops at a cost of £200 each. Two board members, R A McQuitty and J H McLean, were placed in charge of executing the operation. They acquired only 164 teashops, but at an average cost of £500 to £2,000. Some cost as much as £4,500 and £10,000. Some annual rents were over £1,000 a year. Furthermore, the shops made serious profit losses from the start. An extraordinary meeting was called in 1905. McQuitty and McLean were immediately sacked and all the shops were quickly divested, but by then total losses amounted to nearly £300,000. Mazawattee came very close to collapse, and in attempt to save money it had to severely reduce its advertising expenditure.

The chocolate and cocoa business showed its first profit in 1907.

Unlike Lipton, Mazawattee never owned any tea plantations. They argued that this left them free to choose the best tea at auction, but it also left them vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices.

By 1913 much of Ceylon’s agricultural land had given way to the far more profitable rubber plantations. As the output of Ceylon tea was reduced, Mazawattee was forced to make up the difference with tea from India and Java. The only other option would have been to increase wholesale prices to untenable levels.

John Lane Densham retired as managing director and chairman in 1916, and Alexander Jackson (1857 – 1936) took over his roles.

In 1917 Mazawattee was likely the third largest manufacturer of packet tea, after J Lyons and Horniman & Co.

Joseph Densham (1883 – 1961) took over as chairman from 1936. That year the decision was taken to abandon the confectionery business.

Both the company factories were destroyed by air raids during World War II. The offices were transferred to 52 -54 Leadenhall Street. As late as 1948, the company was denied licence by the government to rebuild its factories. As such, Mazawattee was produced by Brooke Bond until 1952.

Joseph Densham retired as chairman in 1952.

Mazawattee was sold to Burton, Son & Sanders, confectioners of Ipswich, in 1953. The freehold factory at New Cross was sold to Johnson & Phillips, electrical engineers, for £190,000, and production was moved to premises at Thomas Street, Limehouse. From this juncture Mazawattee was sold as an economy brand.

The product ceased to be sold in 1965 and Densham & Sons was liquidated in 1967. Mazawattee tea survived in South Africa until at least the mid-1980s as a catering brand for mine workers.

Tea

Horniman: inventor of packaged tea

March 25, 2015 T Farrell 2 Comments

Horniman & Co was likely the largest tea firm in the world throughout much of the latter half of the nineteenth century. It was the first tea producer to package the product individually, at a time when tea was bought loose from a grocer.

John Horniman introduces packaged tea
John Horniman (1804 – 1893) was a Quaker from Reading, England. The Horniman family had emigrated from Germany to Devon in the 15th century. Quakers often promoted products such as tea and confectionery as an alternative to alcohol and tobacco.

Horniman had established himself as a tea dealer in Northampton by 1825. At this time, tea was a luxury good, mainly consumed by the rich.

During this period tea was sold loose by grocers. As such, it was frequently subject to adulteration by unscrupulous vendors. Horniman was the first to package his tea in individual packets from 1826. He branded it as Horniman’s Pure Tea.

Tea consumption in England rose rapidly from the 1840s onwards. The business was based on the Isle of Wight by 1846.

To cope with increasing demand, Horniman invented a crude tea- packing machine.

Horniman & Co was relocated to Philpot Lane in London in the late 1840s. The site was chosen due to its proximity to Mincing Lane, where tea auctions were held. The business had moved to Dalston Place by 1851. A warehouse was opened at Wormwood Street, nearby to Mincing Lane, in 1854.

The influential Dr Arthur Hill Hassall (1817 – 1894) of The Lancet vouched for the purity of Horniman’s product in 1859. Theirs was the only Chinese green tea examined by The Lancet that was found to be free of added colouring, which was commonly used to disguise poor quality.

The British government reduced the duty on tea in 1864. Horniman’s passed on the savings to the customer by lowering the price of their product. There were 2,280 outlets for their product by 1864.

The Horniman & Co warehouse contained the largest stock of duty-paid tea in London in 1867. Over 12,000 sq ft of warehouse floorspace was constantly in use.

Horniman & Co grows to become the largest tea business in the world
John Horniman retired in 1869. His son, Frederick John Horniman (1835 – 1906), took over management of the firm. A dynamic man, Frederick was intelligent and likeable.

Horniman’s Pure Tea had a strong export market by 1876, with high sales in Europe. The success of the firm was built on a dedication to quality, keen prices and strong marketing.

The tea warehouse on Wormwood Street burned down in 1879. The tea, on which duty had already been paid, was completely destroyed. The fire caused between £100,000 and £150,000 worth of damage (between around £11 million and £17 million in 2015 prices). Temporary premises were quickly arranged, and the firm was able to draw upon its tea reserves, so that only a few days of production were lost.

A new six-storey warehouse was built on the same site in 1880. By this time the firm had an annual sale of over five million packets of tea, and 4,000 outlets.

Previously the sole proprietor, Frederick Horniman took on his son, Emslie Horniman, as well as S R Brewerton and others as partners in 1889.

Horniman & Co was the largest tea firm in the world by 1890. Tea packet labels were printed in nine different languages. Over 5,000 chests of tea, weighing 100lbs each, were exported each week.

The founder, John Horniman, died in 1893. He had given generously to charitable causes throughout his life, but still left a personal estate of £320,000 (£37 million in 2015). His will donated much of his wealth to good causes.

Rival manufacturer of packaged tea, Mazawattee, had decisively overtaken Horniman in sales by 1892.

Horniman & Co sold ten million packets of tea annually by 1893. Tea was sourced from India, China and Ceylon, and only the young spring growths were used.

To house the artefacts he had amassed during his travels around the world, Frederick Horniman opened the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, London, in 1890. He donated the museum to the public in 1901, and it remains a leading London attraction.

Horniman tea was sold through over 10,000 outlets by 1903.

Frederick Horniman died in 1906 with an estate valued at £421,628.

The business was taken over by his son, Emslie John Horniman (1863 – 1932).

Acquisition by J Lyons
Horniman & Co was acquired by J Lyons & Co, the leader in the packet tea market, in 1918 . Lyons wished to build their tea sales in the North of England, where Horniman was strong. Lyons opened the largest tea packing factory in the world at Greenford on the outskirts of London in 1920.

Emslie John Horniman died in 1932 with an estate valued at £317,605.

Horniman was marketed as the Lyons premium tea brand by the 1970s. It was their highest seller in South Wales. However the brand was eventually withdrawn from sale in Britain.

The brand is now owned worldwide by Douwe Egberts. In Spain, Hornimans leads the hot tea market with a 25 percent share. It is also available in Spanish-speaking South American markets. In Italy, Royal Tea traces its origins to Horniman & Co.

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