A FORTUNE FROM A TEAPOT.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 18 (Supplement)

A FORTUNE FROM A TEAPOT.

■ » GROWTH OF LYONS BUSINESS. Corned beef and cabbage are no more inseparable than an Englishman and his tea; and from this assumption has grown an English business which serves 10,000,000 meals a week. "This is the record recently established by Lyons' tea shops," writes Caesar Saerchinger in a copyrighted article in the New York "Evening Post." "Everybody knows TLiyonsV' comments Mr. Saerchinger, continuing: Next to the London bus and the London bobby there is nothing more eharaceristic of London than the stereotyped white-and-gold store front of these übiquitous lunch-rooms, with their stereotyped exhibits of cakes and sweets in front and their marble-topped tables inside, waited on by "Nippy," the neat Lyons' waitress with her chic uniform, diminutive lace-trimmed apron and frilled cap, and her inimitable cockney accent. In the early 'nineties an ordinary cup of tea, even in the cheapest coffeehouse, or "pub," cost threepence, or six cents. About that time young Montague Gluckstein, road salesman in his family's cigar business, found it necessary to "break out in a new line," and decided that a good pot (not cup!) of the national beverage could be furnished for twopence, or four cents. His family, the Glucksteins, who together with their relations, the Salmonses, owned the tobacco business of Salmon and Gluckstein (now the English equivalent of the United Cigar Stores), thought catering a low occupation, in:ompatible with the "aristocratic" trade )f cigar manufacturing. After a family council they agreed to 'urnish the capital for the new enterprise, but only on condition that the ; amily name was not to be used. So Vtontague looked up an obscure cousin jy the name of Lyons (afterwards Sir roseph Lyons), offered him a share in he business and made him titular head. They started by getting the catering :ontract for one of those exhibitions, at Newcastle, opened a kiosk, served their 'tuppeny pot" and the best bread and mtter at a reasonable price, and hired t Hungarian band. It was a howling juccess, and the foundation of a new amily fortune was laid. Other exhibiions followed, and then the Piccadilly ea shop, which became the model for others in London alone. Now the firm, grown into a trust, runs lot only these tea shops but a whole enes of de luxe low-priced restaurants >r super-cafes" on a gigantic scale, cnown as "Corner Houses" or "Maisons also one of the biggest highlass catering establishments, the Troadero, serving anything from a dance upper to a banquet, and two large Lorn lon hotels, with "Continental" cafes and i~no»tjpping't.ru*f 1 - ~ -'