Spreads & sauces

A1: a history of Brand & Co

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Brand’s A1 became the highest-selling brown sauce in the world. Brand’s Essence of Chicken is a popular health supplement in Asia.

Henderson William Brand
Henderson William Brand (1805 – 1893) was born in Durham, North East England, the son of Thomas Brand, an innkeeper and brewer.

Henderson Brand probably worked in his father’s kitchen, and it is likely that he possessed a precocious culinary talent, as by the age of twelve he was employed in the kitchen of the Prince Regent (1762 – 1830) as “under cook”.

A bottle of A1 sauce, manufactured in Britain for export to Singapore (2018)

The Prince Regent was a confirmed gastronome who had previously employed Marie-Antoine Careme (1784 – 1833), the founder of modern haute cuisine, and one of the greatest chefs of his era. Brand thus had an excellent opportunity to develop his culinary repertoire in one of the greatest kitchens in Europe.

The Prince Regent became King George IV from 1820. Brand was promoted to “Yeoman of the Mouth”, a position akin to that of sous chef, from 1822.

Brand was appointed head chef to Thomas William Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (1754 – 1842) from 1826. Coke was a charismatic man, and regularly held large dinner parties to discuss his agricultural improvements. His magnificently-equipped kitchen at Holkham Hall in Norfolk boasted a fireplace large enough to roast an ox.

Brand published an updated version of Simpson’s Cookery, a popular cookbook, in 1834.

Brand established a factory/shop on 11 Little Stanhope Street in Mayfair, London from 1835. His first product was Essence of Chicken, using a recipe he had allegedly developed for the convalescent king. Effectively a concentrated consomme, it was made by heating chopped meat inside a pot, and then separating the fibre and fat to leave a clear amber “liquid essence”. It was recommended as a substitute for brandy in relieving exhaustion and nervous ailments.

Shortly afterwards, Brand introduced Essence of Beef at the request of a Dr Druitt.

Brand was a skilled chef, but perhaps a lacklustre businessman, and he was declared bankrupt in 1843. Brand & Co was acquired by a Mr Withall.

H.W. Brand
Henderson Brand re-emerged from 1858, trading as “H.W. Brand”. He was appointed Cook and Co-Manager of the Cuisine at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. It was at the Exhibition that he first introduced “Brand’s International Sauce”. It contained vinegar, Eastern spices, and dried fruits including raisins, sultanas, dates, oranges and tomatoes. At the Exhibition it was ranked “A1”, and thus became known by this name.

A1 sauce was soon introduced to the general public, and was an immediate success. It was distributed by the great food wholesalers of the period, including Crosse & Blackwell, J T Morton, E Lazenby & Son, and Batty & Co. By 1865 it was in use by the Royal household, and available at the dining rooms of the House of Lords and House of Commons.

Dence & Mason take over Brand & Co
Thomas Dence (1840 – 1918) acquired Brand & Co from Mr Withall for £5,000 in 1873. Dence was born in London to a Kentish grocer.

Thomas Dence (1840 – 1918) in 1904

Dence was joined in partnership by John James Mason (1833 – 1896), who managed the business. Mason was to prove instrumental in improving the range of foods for convalescents at Brand & Co.

Brand & Co had acquired H.W. Brand, including the rights to A1 sauce, by 1886.

Increasing sales saw a new site established at Vauxhall from 1887. There were two facilities; a meat processing plant and a sauce factory. The meat plant was described as the largest kitchen in Britain. Production was also expanded into soups and meat pastes.

Meanwhile, Henderson William Brand died in 1893 as a sadly forgotten figure who received no newspaper obituaries.

Sales of A1 sauce were such that Brand & Co struggled to meet demand, and so the business never actively sought out export markets. Gilbert Heublein (1849 – 1937), a German-born spirits distributor resident in Connecticut, was impressed by A1 sauce following a visit to England. After much effort he acquired the exclusive United States distribution rights to A1 sauce from 1894.

A Heublein advertisement in 1895 claimed that A1 held over 50 percent of the British bottled sauce market. It was described as a milder version of Worcestershire sauce.

John James Mason died with an estate valued at £151,811 in 1896.

Brand & Co products received royal warrants from Edward VII, the Tsarina of Russia and the Empress of Germany.

Brand & Co had entered into relative decline by the turn of the twentieth century. Its meat extracts had fallen behind competitors such as Bovril, Liebig’s and Armour’s. The business lacked focus, energy and drive.

Brand & Co employed 200 people by 1906. The business processed about six tons of meat every day. Staff were provided with a canteen, smoking room and club room.

Brand & Co is registered as a company
Brand & Co was registered as a private limited company in 1907. The company continued to be managed by the children, and later grandchildren, of Mason and Dence.

Brand & Co struggled to meet increasing consumer demand, and Heublein established a factory to produce A1 sauce in Connecticut from 1916.

Thomas Dence died as a highly wealthy man in 1918, with an estate valued at over £917,672. He was succeeded as chairman of Brand & Co by his son, Alexander Henry Dence (1876 – 1949).

Brand’s Essence of Chicken had been introduced to Singapore by the early 1930s.

A1 sauce had been established as one of the leading condiments in the United States by the 1930s.

Brand’s Essence of Chicken (2015)

Colin Sturtevant Dence (1907 – 1996) had been appointed managing director of Brand & Co by 1939.

The Vauxhall works were hit by a German bomb during the London Blitz in 1940. Four staff members were killed.

Heublein claimed that A1 was the highest-selling thick sauce in the world by 1948.

Brand & Co became a public company from 1949. The business employed 650 people, and the Vauxhall site occupied 2.5 acres. Brand’s Essence and A1 sauce remained the principal products, and exports accounted for 26 percent of production.

Brand & Co received a Royal Warrant to supply A1 sauce to George VI.

A1 sauce sold in Canada in 1956 listed its ingredients as tomato puree, orange marmalade, raisins, onions, garlic, malt vinegar, sugar, salt, tragacanth (an emulsifier and thickening agent), spices and flavourings.

Brand & Co is acquired by Cerebos
Brand & Co was acquired by Cerebos for £4.5 million in 1959. Cerebos produced a range of well-known packaged food brands including Bisto, Saxa salt, Paxo and Scott’s Porage Oats.

Sales of Brand’s Essence of Chicken had been successfully established in Asia by 1961. The product was highly-popular as a health supplement amongst the ethnic Chinese of Malaysia and Singapore. A semi-luxury product, it enjoyed high margins.

Cerebos began to manufacture A1 sauce in Canada from 1962, and in South Africa from 1963.

The Vauxhall factory was closed in 1967, and the valuable site was sold for £900,000. Keybridge House now stands in its place. Brand & Co production was relocated to the Cerebos plant in Greatham, County Durham. Sales of Brand’s tinned soups were growing, and the Greatham site offered ample space for expansion.

Cerebos was acquired by Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM) for £61 million in 1968. That same year, Brand & Co won a Queen’s Award for Industry for export achievement.

An American bottle of A1 sauce (2016)

Southeast Asia was the largest market for Brand & Co by the early 1970s, led by sales of Chicken Essence. Factories were established in Singapore and Malaysia at this time. Significant amounts of A1 sauce were exported to Okinawa in Japan.

After suffering considerable profit losses, production of soups and Brand’s meat pastes were discontinued in 1977. A1 sauce also ceased to be distributed in Britain from around this time.

Production of Brand’s Essence ended in Greatham in 1978-9. The factory machinery was transferred to Indonesia, where the product enjoyed a large market.

84 percent of RHM’s Asian profits came from Brand’s Essence of Chicken by the mid-1980s. Brand’s Essence of Chicken held a two third share of its category in the Asia Pacific region. Over four million bottles of Brand’s Essence of Chicken were sold in Singapore in 1985.

Present day
Brand’s Essence of Chicken remains popular in Asia, with reported sales of around £330 million in 2018. A1 sauce is widely sold across North America, where it is manufactured by Kraft. Premier Foods, the successor to RHM, still export A1 sauce from Britain to Asian and European markets.

A1 sauce recipe divergence
As previously mentioned, the original A1 sauce contained vinegar, Eastern spices, and dried fruits including raisins, sultanas, dates, oranges and tomatoes. The English and American A1 sauces have diverged over the years, and neither remains true to the original recipe. The English version no longer contains oranges, raisins or sultanas, whilst the North American versions have removed the dates.

A1 sauce from Britain contains tomatoes, malt vinegar, spirit vinegar, sugar, dates, salt, carob gum (a thickening agent), ginger, caramel colouring, onion powder, nutmeg, black pepper and cayenne pepper.

A1 sauce in the United States contains tomato puree, spirit vinegar, corn syrup, salt, raisin paste, crushed orange puree, mixed spices, garlic powder, caramel colouring, onion powder, potassium sorbate (a preservative), xanthan gum (a thickening agent) and celery seeds.

A1 sauce for the Canadian market is made from malt vinegar, spirit vinegar, tomato puree, sugar, modified cornstarch (a thickening agent), salt, orange juice concentrate, raisin juice concentrate, black treacle, spices, caramel colouring, citric acid and beet powder.

Spreads & sauces

Why can’t you get A1 sauce in the UK?

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The leading brown sauce in Britain is HP. The leading brown sauce in the US is A1.

Broadly speaking, A1 is a cross between HP Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce. HP is sharper and thicker, whereas A1 is a little more fruity. You can find the imported American sauce in larger Tesco supermarkets in the UK. It pairs well with beef, especially in casseroles and meatloaf.

A1 is a British invention, introduced by Henderson William Brand in 1862, when he was co-manager of the cuisine at the International Exhibition in Hyde Park. He submitted the sauce before the Royal Commission for use in the Exhibition’s restaurants. The Chief Commissioner reportedly declared the sauce to be “A.1.”

Gilbert Heublein (1849 – 1937), a German-born spirits distributor resident in Connecticut, visited England and encountered A1 sauce. He was impressed, and after much effort he acquired the exclusive US distribution rights to A1 sauce from 1894. He gained the US production rights from 1916.

A1 was phased out in Britain in the 1970s, forced out of a crowded brown sauce market which included HP, Daddies and supermarket own-label nationally, as well as OK, Heinz Ideal, Hammonds and Fletcher’s Tiger Sauce at a regional level.

The brand is currently owned by Kraft in the US. In Britain, the trademark is currently owned by Premier Foods.

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.

Industrial

Blue Circle: cementing its place in history

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Associated Portland Cement was the largest manufacturer of cement in the world throughout much of the twentieth century. It became best known for its Blue Circle brand.

Foundations
At the turn of the twentieth century the British cement industry was faced with increasing competition from Continental and American producers. Henry Osborne O’Hagan (1853 – 1930) arranged for the merger of 24 British cement manufacturers, mostly based in the Thames area, to form Associated Portland Cement (APC) in 1900. O’Hagan was appointed vice chairman of the business, which was the largest cement company in the world.

APC held a 45 percent share of the British cement market and employed 6,147 people in 1903. It had the eighth highest capitalisation of any publicly-quoted company in Britain in 1905, ahead of Guinness, Dunlop and Lever Brothers.

APC made its first overseas investment when it acquired the Tolceta works in Mexico in 1909. Before the First World War works were also acquired in South Africa and British Columbia.

APC acquired a further 33 British competitors in 1911, giving it control of 80 percent of the productive capacity of the British cement industry. The company was a cartel designed to maintain prices in the domestic market at just below those of foreign imports.

APC received large orders for the construction of trenches during the First World War.

O’Hagan stepped down in the post-war period, after he opposed the proposed further expansion of the company.

Alfred Cecil Critchley (1890 – 1963), a board member in the post-war period, suggested that the company use a single brand name, Blue Circle, for its cement products.

Alfred Cecil Critchley (1890 – 1963) in 1942

APC controlled 75 percent of British cement production in 1922.

Due to increasing sales of concrete, APC established the largest cement works in Europe at Northfleet in 1926. The works was well-sited for the raw materials of clay and chalk, and the location on the banks of the River Thames allowed for convenient export of finished product.

APC was the 15th most valuable public British company in 1930, with an estimated market value of £13.9 million.

The Red Triangle cement and brick group was acquired for over £2 million in 1931. Following the acquisition APC held 70 percent of the British cement market.

APC employed 6,720 people in 1935. The company had 16 managing directors, and no central chairman. Instead, each managing director was allocated responsibility for a committee within the company, i.e. sales or finance. Because APC was comprised of numerous component companies, there were an additional 40 ordinary directors .

APC acquired Alpha Cement in 1938. Following the takeover APC controlled 84 percent of the British cement market, and directly employed about 8,000 people.

P L Payne argued that the company failed to turn its monopoly power to its advantage. It has been suggested that the APC acquisitions destroyed, rather than added, value.

The economist George Stigler (1911 – 1991) calculated that between 1900 and 1960 APC acquired 125 percent of British cement production capacity, yet its market share had declined to just 70 percent by 1960.

Post Second World War period
Cement works in Australia and New Zealand were acquired after the Second World War. A new cement plant was established at Selangor, Malaysia, in 1954.

Two new cement works were established at Cauldon in Staffordshire and Westbury in Wiltshire in 1954. Each site had an annual capacity of 175,000 tons, and the total cost amounted to £5 million. Following their construction, APC operated 26 cement works in Britain.

APC employed 11,000 people in 1955. It was the largest cement group in the world, and claimed to offer the product at the lowest cost.

APC enjoyed a huge growth in profits between 1955 and 1965. APC was the 15th largest public company in Britain in 1965, with a market capitalization of £138.3 million. It controlled two thirds of the British cement industry.

APC built plants overseas, and became known for its expertise in low-cost cement manufacturing. A notable APC contract was the Aswan Dam in Egypt, which used 150,000 tons of cement.

APC established a new cement works at Northfleet in 1968. The plant cost £35 million and had an output of 3.5 million tons a year.

APC employed a capital of £246 million in 1974, and had a British workforce of 18,325.

Difficulties, diversification and sale
APC struggled when the 1970s oil crisis led to increased fuel prices, due to the highly energy intensive nature of cement production. It was also overly dependent on a shrinking domestic market which accounted for over half of profits.

John Milne (born 1924) was appointed managing director from 1975. Faced with a declining domestic cement market, Milne hired McKinsey & Co, management consultants, in 1975.

APC changed its name to Blue Circle from 1978.

The Aberthaw Cement Works, Wales in 2009. The site was acquired by Blue Circle in 1983.

The British workforce was reduced by more than half to 6,500 between 1974 and 1982. It was announced that a further 1,200 jobs would be lost in 1983.

Blue Circle was the 74th most highly-valued public company in Europe in 1982.

Milne relocated company headquarters from London to Berkshire, on the basis that it was closer to his own home. The site chosen, at Aldermaston, also housed the Ministry of Defence’s nuclear weapons research facility. The company staff association protested such a risky move during the Cold War. Milne stood up at the annual general meeting and declared that if nuclear war was announced, he wanted to be under the first bomb, and the relocation went ahead.

A declining British cement market saw Blue Circle consolidate; it acquired Aberthaw Cement Works, the fourth largest cement manufacturer in Britain, for £26.3 million in 1983.

Following advice from McKinsey, Blue Circle also began to diversify. It acquired Armitage Shanks of Staffordshire, the largest manufacturer of ceramic baths, sinks and toilet bowls in Britain, for £35 million in 1980.

Bermid Qualcast, a cooker and lawnmower manufacturer, was acquired in a hostile takeover which valued the company at £217 million, in 1987.

Diversification aided profits in the short term, but disguised the fact that cement sales were declining. Blue Circle spent £58 million to reduce its cement production capacity by 15 percent in 1992.

Blue Circle had declined to become the third largest cement manufacturer in the world by 1991. That year the bathrooms business was sold to American Standard for £253 million, and the heating business was sold to Baxi for £480 million.

Blue Circle employed 19,690 people in 1992.

Blue Circle was forced to leave its Aldermaston headquarters in 1993, following a nuclear leak from the MOD facility.

Blue Circle invested £700 million to expand its presence in Asia. However subsequent price wars depressed the company’s share price, and rendered the business vulnerable to a takeover.

Blue Circle was the sixth largest cement manufacturer in the world when it was acquired by Lafarge, its French rival, for £3.4 billion in 2001. The merger created the largest cement manufacturer in the world.

The Northfleet Cement Works were closed with the loss of 240 jobs in 2005. The site had exhausted its raw materials. All workers were offered jobs at other Lafarge sites.

Industrial

The British car industry

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In 1929 France overtook England as the second largest manufacturer of cars in the world.

By 1938 car manufacturing was the third largest industry in Britain.

By 1952 cars were the largest British export.

In 1960 British Motor Corporation was the tenth largest company in the world outside the United States, with annual sales of $969 million. Ford Motor of Britain was the 19th largest company outside the US, with annual sales of $753 million.

In 1965 British Ford employed 62,418 people and had capital of £195 million. BMC employed 93,000 people and had capital of £118 million. Leyland Motor had capital of £96 million. Vauxhall Motors had capital of £83 million and employed 33,754 people. Rootes had capital of £46 million.

BMC became British Leyland, and was, by 1970, the largest single exporter in Britain, shipping goods worth £320 million (equivalent to £4.3 billion today). Its marques included Rover, Morris, Mini, MG, Land Rover, Range Rover and Jaguar.

The company was brought to its knees by flawed car designs, poor management and excessive strikes by its workforce. While Rover and Morris had been merged in 1968, the constituent companies continued to act like independent companies, stealing market share from each other and failing to share information and skills.

British Leyland demonstrates the danger of grouping various companies under one management system: what if that management is incompetent? Amalgamation often makes sense (the strength in numbers argument), but mergers can also result in weak companies dragging strong companies down with them.

In 2015, the Nissan plant in Sunderland, North East England, produces more cars annually (500,000) than Italy (400,000). This demonstrates clearly that there is no inherent reason why cars can not be profitably manufactured in Britain.

Confectionery

Viennetta: the first branded ice cream dessert

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A look into the background of Wall’s Viennetta.

Viennetta is produced at the Wall’s factory in Gloucester. Wall’s is owned by Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant. Unilever is the largest producer of ice cream in the world, and also manufactures the Magnum, Solero and Ben & Jerry’s brands.

Viennetta

Sales of Viennetta totalled £328 million worldwide in 2013, according to Euromonitor.

Viennetta is an ice cream imitation of the French millefeuille cake. Unilever saved money by adapting the product from a Belgian Cornetto recipe. The packaging was based on a German Christmas log manufactured by Langnese, another Unilever subsidiary. There are no imitations of Viennetta because the process by which it is produced is protected by patent.

Viennetta
A French millefeuille cake

Viennetta was introduced from 1982. It was originally sold only in the United Kingdom, and was a Christmas-only special. The launch was successful, and Viennetta was introduced as a year-round product from 1984. Such was its popularity that Unilever did not have to lobby supermarkets to stock the product, but instead the supermarkets lobbied them. Unilever was consequently able to achieve excellent margins on the product, which the supermarkets often sold as a loss-leader.

According to Professor Geoffrey Jones, Viennetta introduced the concept of the branded ice cream dessert. For the first time, ice cream was the main item of a dessert, and not just an accompaniment to something else on the bowl or plate.

Perhaps the product’s vaguely European-sounding name was considered sophisticated in the early 1980s. Viennetta’s star may be rising worldwide, but it has a reduced presence in its native UK. In 2014 value sales were far below what they were in 1990, not even accounting for inflation.

Food, Retail

A slice of history: Bakers Oven

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Bakers Oven was the largest bakery chain in Britain.

Greggs is a fast food chain with more outlets in Britain than McDonald’s. Specialising in value and convenience, outlets sell sandwiches, but remain best known for “treat” food: sausage rolls, pasties, vanilla slices etc.

Greggs’ dominance in the UK was established when it acquired Bakers Oven, its major rival bakery chain, in 1994. Bakers Oven was about 20 percent more expensive than Greggs, had more of a focus on in-store “baking” and typically offered substantial seating, which Greggs usually lacked.

Bakers Oven
Bakers Oven was a concept developed in 1976 by one of the largest British bread makers, Allied Bakeries. Allied Bakeries also owned other bakery chain fascias, with names such as City Bakeries, Martins and Strathdee, and boasted of operating a store on almost every British high street. ABF owned many prime high street sites; a legacy of local bakery chain acquisitions. They had first attempted to create a nationwide bakery chain in 1968 with the Lite Bite shops.

The claim that the first Bakers Oven was located in Barnard Castle, Durham is untrue. The location was previously operated by Carricks, a Newcastle upon Tyne bakery chain. and it was not rebranded to the Bakers Oven name until 1989.

Bakers Oven rode the rise in demand for healthier bread in the late 1980s, although it never matched the quality of genuine bakers’ produce. It became the largest bakery chain in the UK, however by the early 1990s it had began to consistently lose money. After 100 stores were divested, Bakers Oven blamed the rise of supermarket bread sales for its struggles.

The UK’s third largest bakery chain, Three Cooks, was also owned by a large British bread manufacturer, RHM (formerly Rank Hovis McDougall). The acquisition of Gladdings of Coventry took RHM to 300 outlets by the early 1990s.

Greggs differentiated from its two major rivals in being publicly listed from the 1980s onward, whilst maintaining a large family-owned stake.

A Bakers Oven Outlet in Willenhall in 1995
A Bakers Oven Outlet in Willenhall in 1995

By 1993 Bakers Oven operated over 500 shops and employed over 5,000 people.

Greggs acquires Bakers Oven
In 1994 Greggs acquired Bakers Oven, with 424 stores and two main bakeries, for £18.5 million in cash. This took Greggs to a total of 929 outlets. Greggs was interested in expanding into the South East, where the majority of Bakers Oven outlets were based. Greggs was strongest in the North, particularly the North East, where it had a 40 percent market share in some areas. Greggs was also interested in learning about in-store baking and seated catering from the chain. As a combined group, Greggs was able to lower central buying costs and increase profitability. Greggs also announced plans to lower the pricing of Bakers Oven, which it regarded as excessive.

By 1995 Greggs had steered Bakers Oven into profitability by decreasing the focus on sliced white bread (in which they were undercut by supermarkets) and emphasising higher margin items such as sandwiches, savouries and pastries.

By 1996, 241 Bakers Oven outlets had been converted to the Greggs brand, mostly the units without in-store bakeries and seating and in less desirable locations. The Greggs model was to drive high volume value sales. However, new Bakers Oven outlets continued to be opened, and the chain was regarded as the company’s “premium brand”. In the late 1990s the chain was revamped, and items such as filter coffee and salad rolls were added to the menu.

By 2004 there were only 220 Bakers Oven outlets remaining. By 2006 the brand had been withdrawn from Scotland and the North of England, with all former outlets converted to Greggs. In December 2008 it was announced that the remaining 163 Bakers Oven outlets would be rebranded as Greggs.

Retail

Demise of W H Smith?

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Dowdy, tatty, dirty and unloved stores that increasingly resemble a jumble sale, unmotivated staff and not even good value for money. It sounds like the former Woolworths chain but I was actually describing W H Smith.

Commentators have increasingly singled it out as the next potential High Street victim for closure, as shoppers increasingly gravitate towards out of town sites and online. However, I think predictions of its imminent demise are overblown.

The travel concessions (airports and train stations) are really profitable for the chain. And why not? They’re useful for travellers and the lack of competition and impulse buy nature of the sites mean that they can command high prices with healthy margins.

The high street shops have several USPs:

1. Trashy, mass market books. Better coverage than Waterstones and the supermarkets. These impulse buys will not gravitate online.

2. Really comprehensive magazine stocking.

3. Stationery. Unless there is a Rymans nearby, there are few competitors. And people don’t buy stationery online.

4. Cards. Again, Smith’s may be more convenient if there isn’t a Clintons nearby.

5. Toys and games are always useful.

6. Impulse buys like drinks and snacks will always sell.

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.

Whisky

Rare pleasure: a history of J&B whisky

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How did J&B Rare become the fifth highest-selling spirit in the world?

J&B Rare is introduced to the United States
Long-established London wine merchants Justerini & Brooks introduced J&B Rare, a blended Scotch whisky, from 1936.

J&B Rare was conceived of as an export brand. Its straw-gold body, and light, smooth, delicate character was designed to appeal to the American taste for rye whiskey. It is made with up to 50 percent single malt whisky, including Knockando, Auchroisk, Strathmill and Glen Spey.

J&B Scotch whisky

Charles Guttman (1893 – 1969) of the Paddington Corporation was appointed as the United States distributor, and he initially established the brand in the New York City area.

Justerini & Brooks merged with Twiss, Brownings & Hallowes to form United Wine Traders in 1952.

Abe Rosenberg (1908 – 1985) became a partner in the Paddington Corporation from the mid-1950s. He began to expand J&B Rare distribution outside of its New York City heartland into the wider United States. 70,000 cases of J&B Rare were sold in 1954.

J&B Rare would compete fiercely with Cutty Sark, another Scotch whisky tailored for the American market which had been introduced by Berry Brothers, wine merchants of London, in 1923.

Justerini & Brooks refused to bolster sales by price-cutting, and J&B Rare was the most expensive non-aged Scotch whisky on the market.

Sales grew quickly as J&B Rare benefited from a shift in American tastes away from heavier Scotch whiskies such as Black & White and Ballantine’s, towards lighter blends. 700,000 cases of J&B Rare were sold in the United States in 1961, and it was the leading Scotch whisky in the New York City area.

International Vintners & Distillers
United Wine Traders merged with Gilbeys to become International Vintners & Distillers (IDV) from 1962. Gilbeys’ strong international distribution network helped to establish J&B Rare in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Ireland.

J&B Rare became the highest-selling Scotch whisky in the United States, with one million cases exported in 1962. The New York City area remained the heartland of the product. The brand remained virtually unknown in its native Britain.

Two million cases of J&B Rare were exported to America in 1967. J&B Rare was exported to 84 countries.

2.7 million cases of J&B Rare were sold in 1971, accounting for a substantial 55 percent of IDV profits.

Grand Metropolitan
IDV was acquired by Grand Metropolitan in 1972.

J&B Rare was the seventh highest-selling spirit in the United States by 1974, and the bestselling Scotch.

Rising sales of J&B Rare helped to render Grand Metropolitan the second largest distiller of branded Scotch whisky in the world by 1977. J&B Rare held ten percent of the global Scotch whisky market. Justerini & Brooks were awarded with a Queen’s Award for Export Achievement in 1978.

A push for sales outside the United States was a success, and J&B Rare was the second highest-selling Scotch whisky in the world by the mid-1980s.

J&B Rare was the fifth highest-selling spirit in the world by 1993.

J&B Rare was the tenth highest-selling Scotch whisky in the world in 2021. Its key markets are Southern Europe, South Africa and the United States.

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