  Location within Wales | |
| Established | January 2009 |
|---|---|
| Dissolved | 2023 |
| Location | Port Talbot, Wales, United Kingdom |
| Coordinates | 51°35′38″N3°48′54″W / 51.5940222°N 3.8149896°W |
| Type | Food museum |
| Key holdings | Popular culture items related to baked beans |
| Founder | Barry Kirk |
The Baked Bean Museum of Excellence was a private museum located in Port Talbot, Wales, United Kingdom. [1] The Baked Bean Museum Of Excellence closed in 2023. [2]
The museum was opened in 2009 [2] by Barry Kirk, who changed his name by deed poll to Captain Beany. The museum was located in the living room, bathroom and kitchen of his council flat. [3]
Beany closed the museum in 2023, saying that some of his collection would be donated to the Museum of Advertising in London. [2]
The museum contained examples of branded food cans, advertising and other promotional items associated with baked beans. There were also items from a number of food brands including Heinz, Crosse & Blackwell, Branston, HP and Van Camp's, as well as items relating to the comedy character Mr Bean. [3] There were over 500 items in the museum, and Beany estimates that he had spent over £10,000 building his collection. [4]
Unlike many museums, the Baked Bean Museum of Excellence had no gift shop on-site. Instead, Beany operated a market stall in local businesses on weekends, selling branded souvenirs of both the museum and of his Captain Beany persona.
The museum was registered with the Association of Independent Museums. [3] Comedian Danny Wallace was a patron. In 2018, the museum was the fourth most visited attraction in Port Talbot, according to figures by TripAdvisor. [4]
In 2010, Beany believed that his was the only museum in the world dedicated to baked beans. [3] In 2019, Heinz opened a museum, in the form of a pop-up "Beanz Museum" in Covent Garden London between 30 August and 1 September. The museum contained exhibitions about the Heinz brand to mark the company's 150th anniversary . [5]
The Kraft Heinz Foods Company, formerly the H. J. Heinz Company and commonly known as Heinz, is an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 1869. Heinz manufactures food products in plants on six continents, and markets these products in more than 200 countries and territories. The company claims to have 150 number-one or number-two brands worldwide. Heinz ranked first in ketchup in the US with a market share in excess of 50%; the Ore-Ida label held 46% of the frozen potato sector in 2003.
Port Talbot is a town and community in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales, situated on the east side of Swansea Bay, approximately eight miles from Swansea. The Port Talbot Steelworks covers a large area of land which dominates the south east of the town. It is one of the biggest steelworks in the world, but has been under threat of closure since the 1980s. The population was 31,550 in 2021, comprising about a fifth of the 141,931 population of Neath Port Talbot.
Baked beans are a dish traditionally containing white common beans that are parboiled and then baked in sauce at low temperature for a lengthy period. Canned baked beans are not baked, but are cooked through a steam process.
A biscuit, in many English-speaking countries, including Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa but not Canada or the US, is a flour-based baked and shaped food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be savoury, similar to crackers. Types of biscuit include biscotti, sandwich biscuits, digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, Anzac biscuits, and speculaas.
Neath Port Talbot is a county borough in the south-west of Wales. Its principal towns are Neath, Port Talbot, Briton Ferry and Pontardawe. The county borough borders Bridgend County Borough and Rhondda Cynon Taf to the east, Powys and Carmarthenshire to the north; and Swansea to the west.
Maxwell House is an American brand of coffee manufactured by a like-named division of Kraft Heinz in North America and JDE Peet's in the rest of the world. Introduced in 1892 by wholesale grocer Joel Owsley Cheek, it was named in honor of the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, which was its first major customer. For nearly 100 years, until the late 1980s, it was the highest-selling coffee brand in the United States. The company's slogan is "Good to the last drop," which is often incorporated into its logo and is printed on its labels.
Hovis Ltd is a British company that produces flour, yeast and bread. Founded in Stoke-on-Trent, it began mass-production in Macclesfield in 1886.
Branston is an English food brand best known for the original Branston Pickle, a sweet pickle first made in 1922 in the village of Branston near Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, by Crosse & Blackwell. The Branston factory proved to be uneconomical, and production was moved to Crosse & Blackwell subsidiary, E Lazenby & Sons in Bermondsey, London, where it invested in new buildings in 1924 and 1926, which remained in use until 1969.
The William Underwood Company, founded in 1822, was an American food company best known for its flagship product Underwood Deviled Ham, a canned meat spread. The company had a key role in time-temperature research done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1895 to 1896, which led to the development of food science and food technology as a profession.
James John Joicey FES was an English amateur entomologist, who assembled an extensive collection of Lepidoptera in his private research museum, called the Hill Museum, in Witley, Surrey. His collection, 40 years in the making, was considered to have been the second largest in the world held privately and to have numbered over 1.5 million specimens. Joicey was a fellow of the Zoological Society of London, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Entomological Society, the Royal Horticultural Society, and the Linnean Society of London.
Captain Beany is a Welsh eccentric and charity fundraiser in Sandfields, Port Talbot, South Wales.
Baker's Chocolate is a brand name for the line of baking chocolates owned by Kraft Heinz. Products include a variety of bulk chocolates, including white and unsweetened, and sweetened coconut flakes. It is one of the largest national brands of chocolate in the United States. The company was originally named Walter Baker & Company.
Heinz Baked Beans are a brand of baked beans produced by the H.J. Heinz Company. They have been sold as "Heinz Beanz" in the United Kingdom since 2008.
The Campbell's Company is an American company, most closely associated with its flagship canned soup products. Through mergers and acquisitions, it has grown to become one of the largest processed food companies in the United States with a wide variety of products under its flagship Campbell's brand as well as other brands including Pepperidge Farm, Snyder's of Hanover, V8, and Swanson. With its namesake brand Campbell's produces soups and other canned foods, baked goods, beverages, and snacks. It is headquartered in Camden, New Jersey.
Henry Talbot, born Heinz Tichauer was a German-Australian fashion photographer noted for his long association with the Australian fashion industry, particularly the Australian Wool Board.
Captain Ken's Foods, Inc. is a privately owned frozen foods processing company based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It was founded by Ken Freiberg in 1967.
The H. J. Heinz, Wigan factory is a food manufacturing plant owned by H. J. Heinz Company, based in Kitt Green, Orrell, Wigan in Greater Manchester, England. It is one of the largest food processing plants in Europe and the largest H. J. Heinz facility in the world. It produces over one billion cans of food annually and employs around 850 people.
The International Banana Museum was a museum located in Mecca, California, dedicated to the banana. The one-room museum contained more than 20,000 items related to bananas. In 1999, the museum set a Guinness World Record as the largest museum devoted to a single fruit. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum stated it would close. As of August 2023, it remained closed.
Maurice Drake was a British advertising executive. He missed several years of education due to the Second World War and left school at the age of 14. Drake found work as a filing clerk at an advertising agency before carrying out national service with the Royal Air Force. Upon completion of his military service, he joined public relations firm Armstrong Warden.
