Mackintosh's

Mackintosh's was a British confectionery firm that was principally known for Mackintosh's Toffee and for brands such as Quality Street and Rolo.

The firm was founded by John Mackintosh (1868-1920) and his wife Violet (née Taylor), who bought a pastry shop in Halifax, West Yorkshire with their joint savings of £100 in 1890, the year that they married: Violet, who had been a confectioner's assistant before her marriage, ran the shop whilst her husband continued to work at a cotton mill. In order to attract customers they decided to sell a special toffee. Violet developed a recipe which blended the traditional, brittle English butterscotch with soft, American caramel and they sold the toffee as Mackintosh's Celebrated Toffee. The toffee's success enabled Mackintosh to expand the business beyond Halifax by 1894. Indeed, it was so successful that it "ultimately transformed popular understanding of the term ‘toffee’, previously a description of any sugar or boiled sweet".

Moving from retail to manufacture and wholesale, they first rented a small warehouse in Bond Street, Halifax, and, in 1895, commenced larger scale production at bigger premises at Hope Street. The firm was converted into a limited liability company, John Mackintosh Ltd, in 1899 raising £11,000 and borrowing a further £4,000 to build a new works at Queen's Road. When this building was destroyed by fire in 1909, the insurance payout was used to purchase the vacant Albion Mills and the Queen's Road factory was rebuilt and 1912 expanded to begin chocolate manufacture.

In 1904 Mackintosh established his first overseas factory at Asbury Park, New Jersey which, however, soon failed. Undeterred, a factory was opened in 1906 at Krefeld, near Düsseldorf. By 1914, operations had been established in Australia and Canada and John Mackintosh Ltd employed some 1,000 people.

The German factory was confiscated and the number of employees fell to 250 during the First World War. In 1917 a new line was developed, a chocolate covered Toffee-De-Luxe, but all chocolate production ceased that year when a war-time conscription tribunal refused an exemption for a key manager.

Mackintosh understood the power of marketing and publicity. He began with handbills advertising Mackintosh's Celebrated Toffee as a weekend treat targeting the Saturday afternoon market when workers had a half-holiday and their weekly wage payment in hand. By 1896 Mackintosh was calling himself the "Toffee King" and his product "The King of All the Toffees". In 1902 the firm began consumer and coupon competitions and then national press marketing: the firm bought space in the Daily Mail, Britain's most popular mass newspaper, and used story lines, graphics, and cartoons, when his competitors limited themselves to wordy descriptions.

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