Victorian food brands still extant

[Mercury Wells]

Euro List:-

Lurpack Butter 1888 or 1901(?)

[Mercury Wells]

Oriental List:-

Azuma - Osaka's oldest udon Restaurant 1864
Tsuen Tea, the World's Oldest Teashop in Uji 1160

[J. Wilhelm]

Oriental List:-

Azuma - Osaka's oldest udon Restaurant 1864
Tsuen Tea, the World's Oldest Teashop in Uji 1160

Are they brands sold in shops or supermarkets?

[Mercury Wells]

Oriental List:-

Azuma - Osaka's oldest udon Restaurant 1864
Tsuen Tea, the World's Oldest Teashop in Uji 1160

Are they brands sold in shops or supermarkets?

Nope, but they're sold in house.

[J. Wilhelm]

Oriental List:-

Azuma - Osaka's oldest udon Restaurant 1864
Tsuen Tea, the World's Oldest Teashop in Uji 1160

Are they brands sold in shops or supermarkets?

Nope, but they're sold in house.

Unfortunately they can't enter the list. The most important requirement is that they be widely available as a recognizable brand of some sort. Sometimes 19th C food establishments or chains of restaurants will commission third parties to reproduce special food articles or recipes sold under a brand name equal to the establishment's name. Such is the case of El Globo pastries in Mexico and Café Du Monde in Louisiana, but those are rare cases.

More modern examples in the United States include PF Chang's, Marie Callender's, Boston Market, Cheesecake Factory, Luby's, White Castle Hamburgers, and many others, which are brands for frozen dishes made in the same way as signature dishes served in the restaurants bearing the same name. Also in the US, you have fast food joint branded condiments, such as Whataburger brand ketchup and mayonnaise based sauces (all horrible).

But none of those listed in the paragraph above are Victorian Era brands . Confectioners, chocolatiers, bakeries and pastry establishments from the 19th century have an easier time packaging and selling their products at supermarkets like, for example,  Boudin Bakery in San Francisco (listed). You might find the equivalent in Japan, though; perhaps some local Sake or even Udon noodles like you mentioned could be sold at a Kyoto marketplace, for example, but it would need to be outside of the restaurant itself.

Unless those establishments you mentioned are offering their products, at least in convenience stores ("conbini") in Japan, such as Lawson or 7 Eleven, I don't see a way to put them on the list.


All things being equal, however, I'M SURE there have to be a couple of Meiji Era brands being sold at local combinis.. Perhaps Sake, condiments, or noodles. But it could be a seafood house selling canned or fresh seafood. Seafood is so prevalent, that I'm sure a few brands have emerged and survived from old traditional fishing establishments.


Sorry    Try again!

[Mercury Wells]

No problem 

[J. Wilhelm]

No problem 

Try again! You're close!

[Mercury Wells]

Not very sure about this one.

US &/or Empire  list? :-


Old Judge Coffee (& Tea). Est. 1858 The brand is being "relaunched" btb.


(Have a look at the 4th picture down, to see the adverts on the bus., from 1953.)

So yea or nay in to both lists?

[Mercury Wells]

Empire List:-

Dempster's Bread Est. 1890?

[von Corax]

I'm AFK for the next few days, but when I get back I think I'm going to start a new thread with the actual lists right at the beginning so they're easy to find.

[J. Wilhelm]

I'm AFK for the next few days, but when I get back I think I'm going to start a new thread with the actual lists right at the beginning so they're easy to find.

That's interesting. The only thing to remember is that, I believe, the US list is so long it doesn't fit together with the Mexican and Japanese lists into a single post! There's a post length limit (or there was before) and the US list is very near that limit! Also the current physical listing is not finished (Text file). I have to go through about half the pages in the this thread to compile the complete US list - which isn't that many extras entries, but likely makes the list already over that limit I mentioned.

Also the European list is a jumble. It's basically not curated at all, since not one person was curating it since the beginning, like Uncle Bert did the UK list. And the European list, is not physically written anywhere (that I know of) and remains very underdeveloped compared to the UK and American lists (which is a good thing, gives us a lot more research to do).

[Mercury Wells]

Empire List:-

St-Albert Cheese Co-Op Est. 1894

[J. Wilhelm]

Empire List:-

St-Albert Cheese Co-Op Est. 1894

I remember this brand but I don't remember when I encountered it. I don't think I saw it in Ontario, where the company was founded,as I've never been further east from Alberts, but I may have encountered it during a road trip we took in Canada decades ago. Being a Canadian brand, there's s good chance it crossed the border to the US before the turn of the century, so it might enter both lists.

[Mercury Wells]

Hopefully of interest?

Stole this from Imgur, by the way:-  https://imgur.com/gallery/vZIB4rv

[J. Wilhelm]

Here's another that escaped the radar, and it's a difficult one because it belongs to the class of companies that started as a restaurant and ended up on supermarket shelves.  I have sparingly used a rule of acceptance for these types of brands, provided continuous presence in the market is uninterrupted since the founding of the company.

The brand in question is Rao's (Stylized RAO'S), an Italian migrant restaurant founded in New York City in 1896.

Rao's was founded by Joshua Anthony Rao who emigrated to Harlem in Manhattan, from Southern Italy as a child.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rao%27s


The Wiki entry on Rao's is rather sparse, so this entry is tentative until I can probe more. Still family owned, from New York Rao's opened restaurants in Las Vegas and Los Angeles rather recently (2006, 2013). Today you can find their products at local markets here in Austin, Texas. This makes it difficult to judge whether Rao's has the pedigree to enter the list (about 10 years only to spread it's name nationwide), so it's no wonder we didn't know about this brand. This isn't like Café Du Monde in New Orleans or Pastelería El Globo in Mexico City, where countrymen outside of their base of operations have known about this business for decades if not over a century.

[RJBowman]

I haven't tried Rao's, but it must be good if it's named after the Kryptonian sun god.

[RJBowman]

Has Rochester Root Beer been cataloged yet? It's been around since the 1880's. These days they mostly sell syrup concentrate to small bottlers who put their own name on the bottles, but there are a few regional bottlers of the actual Rochester brand.

[J. Wilhelm]

Has Rochester Root Beer been cataloged yet? It's been around since the 1880's. These days they mostly sell syrup concentrate to small bottlers who put their own name on the bottles, but there are a few regional bottlers of the actual Rochester brand.

The story is complicated, because the parent company behind Rochester Root Beer, named the J. Hungerford Smith Company, from Rochester, was actually the maker for the syrup sold at A&W restaurants, from which the A&W Root beer comes from (which in turn it may be not be listed, because it started well into the 1910s).  The J. Hungerford Smith Company acquired A&W in 1963. After Hungerford died, the company was purchased by United Fruit Company, because J. Hungerford specialized in producing real fruit syrups.  The syrup and canned fruit company still exists and is owned by ConAgra. What is not clear is whether the Rochester Root Beer you're talking about is made by J. Hungerford Smith under ConAgra or not, because Keurig Dr Pepper are selling a "Rochester Root Beer." If not, it's unclear who owns the Rochester Root Beer brand, or perhaps the brand was purchased. If purchased by Keurig Dr Pepper without copying the formula, then it's not the same company and not the same product, and can't be included. If the formula is copied, then it can be included.  There were a couple of brands that couldn't be listed because of that very situation (a Kosher brand of butter if I remember correctly).

The interesting thing about the situation is that A&W is owned by Keurig Dr. Pepper!   So it's one hair away from being listed, it boils down to brand and formula ownership

By the way, the market for Rochester Root Beer is national, not regional. I can buy it at Target in Texas.

https://rochistory.wordpress.com/2019/10/17/kool-things-the-history-of-the-j-hungerford-smith-company/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26W_Root_Beer

https://www.kdpproductfacts.com/product/a0e3h000003LK5UAAW/rochester-root-beer-fountain-drink-12-fl-oz-us

[RJBowman]

The root beer flavor concentrate can be purchased from ConAgra here:
https://www.conagrafoodservice.com/products/root-beer-double-concentrate-1-gal-jugs
They seem to no longer be using the Rochester name.


My experience with the brand dates from the 1990's when a local drive in restaurant offered root beer by the gallon and was reusing the flavor concentrate jugs. At that time, it still said "Rochester" on the jugs.

[J. Wilhelm]

The root beer flavor concentrate can be purchased from ConAgra here:
https://www.conagrafoodservice.com/products/root-beer-double-concentrate-1-gal-jugs
They seem to no longer be using the Rochester name.


My experience with the brand dates from the 1990's when a local drive in restaurant offered root beer by the gallon and was reusing the flavor concentrate jugs. At that time, it still said "Rochester" on the jugs.

If it's 1990s, then I don't know what happened, but one thing we know is the name is owned by Keurig Dr.Pepper as is A&W. I'd say it's because the name was purchased outright. The product could be included, theoretically under J. Hungerford Smith, but that's something I haven't done.

The excuse for keeping a name change is similar to what happened to Aunt Jemima hot cakes. They're no longer called Aunt Jemima, but Pearl Milling Company, in both cases the product is the same, but the name was willingly changed by the parent company.

You can't argue that Pearl Milling isn't Victorian. You can't argue the product isn't the same (it still is identical). You can't argue that the company changed either. It's owned by someone else, but that's true of 99% of all brands. If we could assume the same of the J. Hungerford S. syrup, then it'd be exactly the same situation. Yet the name of the thread, specifically refers to brand names. Maybe a separate sub-list for products still extant with a name change?

I wonder if Uncle Bert is interested in this thread and issuing an opinion? We do have to make a decision on Aunt Jemima, and if I understand correctly, maybe the Kellogg's brand as well, per recent corporate realignment.