Huntley and Palmer
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| Biscuit maker | |
| Founded | 1822 |
| Founder | Joseph Huntley |
| Headquarters | Sudbury, Suffolk, England |
| Website | huntleyandpalmers |
Huntley & Palmers was a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world's first global brands and ran what was once the world’s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley & Son and Huntley & Palmer.
A biscuit business of the same name was re-established in Sudbury, Suffolk in 2006. Since 1985, the New Zealand firm Griffin's Foods makes Huntley and Palmers biscuits under licence.
Huntley & Palmers was founded in 1822 by Joseph Huntley as J. Huntley & Son. Initially the business was a small biscuit baker and confectioner shop at number 119 London Street. A blue plaque is displayed outside. The building is now home to Age UK Berkshire. At this time London Street was the main stage coach route from London to Bristol, Bath and the West Country.
One of the main calling points of the stage coaches was the Crown Inn, opposite Joseph Huntley's shop, and he started selling his biscuits to the travellers on the coaches. Because the biscuits were vulnerable to breakage on the coach journey, he started putting them in metal tins. Out of this innovation grew two businesses: Joseph's biscuit shop that was to become Huntley & Palmers, and Huntley, Boorne and Stevens, a firm of biscuit tin manufacturers founded by his younger son, also called Joseph.
In 1838 Joseph Huntley was forced by ill-health to retire, handing control of the business to his older son Thomas. In 1841, Thomas took as a business partner George Palmer, a distant cousin and member of the Society of Friends. George Palmer soon became the chief force behind its success, establishing sales agents across the country. The company soon outgrew its original shop and moved to a factory on King’s Road in 1846, near the Great Western Railway. The factory had an internal railway system with its own steam locomotives and one of these has been preserved near Bradford.
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