On Catch-Up this week we are spotlighting
on Lipton. Yes, that all-time-available pleasant tea most of us can’t do
without.
Lipton is a British brand of tea, owned by
Unilever. Lipton was also a supermarket chain in the United Kingdom, later sold
to Argyll Foods, after which the company sold only tea. The company is named
after its founder Sir Thomas Lipton. The Lipton ready-to-drink beverages are
sold by "Pepsi Lipton International", a company jointly owned by
Unilever and PepsiCo.
In 1871 Thomas Lipton (1848–1931) of
Glasgow, Scotland used his small savings to open his own shop, and by the 1880s
the business had grown to more than 200 shops. In 1929, the Lipton grocery
retail business was one of the companies that merged with Home and Colonial
Stores, Maypole Dairy Company, Vyes & Boroughs, Templetons, Galbraiths
& Pearks to form a food group with more than 3,000 shops. The group traded
in the high street under various names, but was registered on the UK stock
market as Allied Suppliers. Lipton's became a supermarket chain focused on
small towns. Allied was acquired by Argyll Foods in 1982; the supermarket
business was rebranded as Presto during the 1980s.
Lipton produces instant soup mixes. In the
1950s in the United States, Lipton ran an advertisement campaign promoting
French onion dip prepared at home using Lipton's French onion soup mix, thus
helping to popularize chips and dip. Hundreds of new commercially produced
varieties of dips were later introduced in the U.S.