Rathbones Bakeries was a bakery founded in 1893, in Wigan, Lancashire. By 1997 it was owned by Greencore, through that company's purchase of Kears Group [1] Two years later, Kears Group rebranded itself as Rathbones. [2]
Kears was bought from Greencore by Finedon Mill of Northampton, for £20.6 million in April 2004, [3] [4] a year in which it had sales of £100 million, with customers including Morrisons and Tesco. [5] Following a fire the company went into receivership, with part of its operation sold to Warburtons and parts to Morrisons in 2005. [5] [6]
Tesco plc is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, England. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues and the ninth-largest in the world measured by revenues. It has shops in five countries across Europe, and is the market leader of groceries in the UK.
Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc, trading as Morrisons, is the fourth largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, and is headquartered in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England.
Nabisco is an American manufacturer of cookies and snacks headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey. The company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Mondelēz International.
The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, also called the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 100, FTSE, or, informally, the "Footsie", is a share index of the 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange with the highest market capitalisation. The index is maintained by the FTSE Group, a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group.
Greencore Group plc is a food company in Ireland. It was established by the Irish government in 1991, when Irish Sugar was privatised, but today Greencore's products are mainly convenience foods, not only in the Republic of Ireland but also in the United Kingdom. A major supplier to British and Irish supermarkets, Greencore is the largest sandwich manufacturer in the world. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Panera Bread Company is an American chain store of bakery-café fast casual restaurants with over 2,000 locations, all of which are in the United States and Canada. Its headquarters are in Sunset Hills, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. The company operates as Saint Louis Bread Company in the Greater St. Louis area, where it has over 100 locations. Offerings include bakery items, pasta, salads, sandwiches, soups, and specialty drinks. As of 2020, the menu also includes flatbread pizzas.
Rakuten Group, Inc., stylized as "Rakuten", is a Japanese electronic commerce and online retailing company based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around Rakuten Ichiba, its business-to-many EC platform and one of the largest e-commerce sites in Japan, its businesses include financial services utilizing fintech, as well as digital content and communications services such as messaging app Viber, e-book distributor Kobo, and Japan's fourth mobile carrier Rakuten Mobile. Rakuten has 14,826 employees worldwide, operating in 29 countries and regions, and its revenues totaled US$7.2 billion with operating profits of about US$347.9 million as of 2016. It is often referred to as "the Amazon of Japan".
The Sara Lee Corporation was an American consumer-goods company based in Downers Grove, Illinois. It had operations in more than 40 countries and sold its products in over 180 countries. Its international operations were headquartered in Utrecht, The Netherlands. While no longer operated independently, as of 2020, Sara Lee still actively exists as a current brand name under the auspices of holding company Kohlberg, making frozen cakes, etc. at its present facility in Illinois, United States.
Ocado Group is a UK-based grocery solutions and logistics business that licenses its technology to grocery retailers around the world. Ocado Group has a 50% joint stake in the UK online supermarket Ocado Retail or Ocado.com. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Associated British Foods plc (ABF) is a British multinational food processing and retailing company headquartered in London, England. Its ingredients division is the world's second-largest producer of both sugar and baker's yeast and a major producer of other ingredients including emulsifiers, enzymes and lactose. Its grocery division is a major manufacturer of both branded and private label grocery products and includes the brands Mazola, Ovaltine, Ryvita, Jordans and Twinings. Its retail division, Primark, has some 384 stores across several countries, predominantly Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK. ACH Food Companies is an American subsidiary.
Northern Foods is a British food manufacturer headquartered in Wakefield, England. It was formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the original FTSE 100 Index. The company is credited, together with Marks & Spencer, with creating the UK Chilled Food category. The driver of this growth was Christopher Haskins, the son-in-law of the company’s founder Alec Horsley. Haskins became a director in 1967, deputy chairman in 1974, and was chairman from 1980 to 2002. The company was delisted in 2011 when it was bought by the 2 Sisters company.
Warburtons is a British baking firm founded by Thomas Warburton in 1876 and based in Bolton, a town formerly in Lancashire, England, and now in Greater Manchester. For much of its history Warburtons only had bakeries in Lancashire and it remains a family-owned company. As of 2018, Warburtons has 12 bakeries, 14 depots, and 4,500 employees around the UK.
Cooplands is the third largest bakery chain in the UK with over 160 outlets and 12 cafes located across Yorkshire, County Durham and Lincolnshire in the United Kingdom. Cooplands produces takeaway food chiefly for the lunch-time trade, specialising in sandwiches, pasties, desserts, cakes, and bread. It competes with other local cafés and takeaway outlets, and national and international high street food chains and franchises.
Uniq plc was a British food manufacturer. Listed on the London Stock Exchange and once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, it was taken over by Irish foods conglomerate Greencore in 2011.
Luke Oliver Johnson, is a British entrepreneur. He is a former chairman of the Pizza Express chain, the Royal Society of Arts and Channel 4. Johnson calls himself a "projector", in line with the 17th century term for a man involved in many different businesses. He is the part owner and chairman of Gail's Artisan Bakery and Feng Sushi among other businesses. He is a former owner of The Ivy, Le Caprice and J Sheekey restaurants and a former part owner of Giraffe Restaurants.
Merlin Entertainments Ltd is a British entertainments company headquartered in Poole, England. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by a consortium of Kirkbi A/S in November 2019.
Cranswick plc is a leading UK food producer and supplier of premium, fresh and added-value food products. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Ranjit Singh Boparan is a British businessman, and the founder and owner of 2 Sisters Food Group with his wife Baljinder Kaur Boparan. Known as the "Chicken King" in the West Midlands, he has an estimated personal fortune of £595 million.
Boparan Holdings Ltd is a company based in Birmingham, England that owns food production and restaurant businesses. It is owned by Ranjit Singh Boparan, and his wife Baljinder Kaur Boparan. In March 2020, Boparan bought the Italian restaurant chain Carluccio's for £3.4 million. In October, the same year, Boparan purchased Gourmet Burger Kitchen.
Risk Capital Partners LLP is a London-based private equity firm, co-founded in 2001 by Ben Redmond and Luke Johnson. The firm invests in numerous sectors, including leisure, retail, media, healthcare, IT services, financial services and support services.