Batchelors

Last updated

Batchelors
Product type Food
Owner Premier Foods
CountryUnited Kingdom
Introduced1895;130 years ago (1895)
MarketsUK and Australia
Previous owners Unilever
Best Foods
Website www.batchelorsrange.co.uk (UK)
www.batchelors-meals.com.au (Australia)

Batchelors is a popular brand of predominantly dried food products. The Batchelors company was founded in 1895 in Sheffield, England by William Batchelor, initially specialising in canned vegetables. It released its first dried soup in 1949, and it started selling its convenience Cup-a-Soup range in 1972. [1] The company now makes pasta and rice dishes like Pasta 'n' Sauce and Super Rice along with instant soup, in particular Cup-a-Soup and noodle products such as Super Noodles. The company is the UK market leader in dried soups.[ citation needed ]

Contents

Since early 2008, the Batchelors name has also been applied to Premier Foods' condensed soup range, previously sold as Campbell's. [2] The Campbell's brand returned to the UK in 2011, after a five-year non-compete agreement expired. [3]

History

William Batchelor was born in Habrough, Lincolnshire, in 1860 to Ellen, née Hudson, and James Batchelor, a farmworker who later had his own farm. William discovered a way to can vegetables such as processed peas and formed Batchelors Foods in 1895. He died in August 1913 whilst on holiday in Bridlington, aged 53. His daughter Ella (who became Ella Gasking), 22 at the time, took over leadership of the company and developed it to include processed peas, with Batchelors eventually becoming a household name.

Ella Hudson Gasking (1891–1966) often known as Mrs E. H. Gasking, took over the family business of Batchelor's Foods, opening a new factory at Wadsley Bridge, Sheffield in 1937 costing £100,000 to build. It was the largest canning plant in Britain, covering 12 acres including playing fields & speaker radios for staff. [4] In 1943 Gasking was awarded an OBE in recognition of her contribution to the war effort and the grocery industry.

In 1935 a Irish version of the brand was launched. But soup was called "McDonnells" in Ireland.

Due to staff difficulties and rationing in the war, the company was bought by James Van den Bergh of Unilever in 1943, where it became part of Van den Bergh Foods, later based in Crawley. In 1948, Gasking retired and her younger brother Maurice Batchelor took over. The company took over Poulton and Noel, another soup company. In 1949, the first dried soup, chicken noodle flavour, was sold. In 1972, Cup-a-Soup was launched.

In 1961, Batchelors launched "Vesta" instant dried curry, a product that enabled people to make a quick curry at home. [5] It became well-known, even aspirational. [6] The product was heavily advertised through to the 1980s as a tasty full meal that could be ready in 20 minutes. [7] The resulting curry was later described in The Guardian as "suspiciously shiny brown goo". [5] In 1982, the humorous novelist Sue Townsend made her schoolboy character Adrian Mole eat the product, only to be mocked for it by an Indian neighbour. [7] [8]

In January 2001, Unilever took over Bestfoods. To be allowed to take over the American company, Unilever had to sell off some brands for monopoly regulation. It sold off Batchelors and Oxo to the UK subsidiary of the Campbell Soup Company. [9]

Unilever retained ownership of the Cup-a-Soup brand in America and Australia, rebranding it under Lipton and Continental respectively.

In 2006, Campbell's soup withdrew from the UK market, and sold its assets, including Batchelors, to Premier Foods. The Campbell's name was licensed to Premier Foods until 2008, following which Campbell's Soup was rebranded as Batchelors.

In 2008, Batchelors was rebranded with a new logo.[ citation needed ]

References

  1. ↑ "Rise of foreign ownership for nostalgic food brands in our Cumbrian shopping trolleys". The Mail. Cumbria, UK. 18 January 2018.
  2. ↑ Beckett, Alex (10 January 2011). "Campbell's soup returns but not as Andy knew it". The Grocer. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021. Retrieved 23 November 2022.
  3. ↑ "Campbell's soup returns to UK shelves for first time in three years". Mirror.co.uk. Archived from the original on 22 July 2017. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
  4. ↑ "The Woman Engineer Volume 4". www2.theiet.org. Archived from the original on 10 June 2020. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
  5. 1 2 Beckett, Fiona; Blythman, Joanna; Ehrlich, Richard; Fort, Matthew; Gluck, Malcolm; Protz, Roger (29 June 2002). "Noshtalgia: The British attitude to food has changed beyond all recognition in the past half century. So here's a little reminder of the people, trends, dishes and products that shaped the nation's tastebuds". The Guardian . Retrieved 10 November 2025.
  6. ↑ Jackson, Peter; Brembeck, Helene; Everts, Jonathan; Fuentes, Maria; Halkier, Bente; et al. (2018). "A Short History of Convenience Food". Reframing Convenience Food. Cham: Springer International Publishing. p. 15–38. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-78151-8_2. ISBN   978-3-319-78150-1 . Retrieved 10 November 2025.
  7. 1 2 Canani, Marco (2024). "The 'Toad in the Hole': Food and Foodways in Sue Townsend's 'Adrian Mole' YA Saga" (PDF). Malmo University Studies in Children's Literature, Culture, and Media. pp. 15–29. Retrieved 10 November 2025.
  8. ↑ Townsend, Sue (1989) [1982]. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ . Methuen Mandarin. p. 133. Had Vesta curry and rice for dinner, during which Mrs Singh came round and talked Hindi to Bert. She seemed to find our curry very funny, she kept pointing to it and laughing.
  9. ↑ "Campbell Soup buys rival Batchelor's". BBC News. 29 January 2001. Archived from the original on 14 March 2007. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
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