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Importers Retail Salerooms
was a small subsidiary company
specialising in the sale of tea and coffee
selling from a small number of retail
shops mainly in the home counties but
spreading out to Cheltenham and Plymouth.
The firm was founded by Ernest Pinkerton
in 1934. He was an Englishman who had
spent many years in the United States
where he had established a similar tea and
coffee business before returning to
England and starting Importers Retail
Salerooms. They specialised in supplying
exotic blends such as Blue Mountain
Jamaican coffee and Peppermint Tea to the
individual customer. The first store
opened in Bromley, Kent, and the business
grew rapidly with another branch in
Maidstone. In the pre-war years tea was
the largest part of the business but after
the Second World War coffee gradually
became the larger item sold. The teas were
individually wrapped and packaged in each
branch and the coffee was roasted daily.
Only the best teas and coffees were sold
and staff regularly gave advice to
customers if required. The tea was blended
centrally at Woolwich where Earl Grey and
Windsor were the favourite blends.
However, more exotic blends were produced
including Japanese Cherry (a blend of
Japanese green tea with selected bush
sprouts flavoured with cherries) or
Gunpowder Tea (made of tightly curled
leaves of the best China grade). The
blends were delivered each week to the
shops where the staff packaged it as and
when needed. Every day roasting machines
in each store were at work roasting twenty
different blends that the company offered.
The roasters were positioned in the front
windows of each store and the smell of
roasted coffee wafted out through the
extractors enticing passers-by. To ensure
quality only small amounts of beans were
roasted at a time. After roasting the
beans were stored in special containers
which emptied from the bottom to ensure an
even rotation of the coffee. Grinding was
another important procedure. No coffee was
ground until the customer asked for it and
they were encouraged only to order small
amounts for their immediate needs.
Furthermore it need to be ground to suit
the machine for which it was going to be
used. Filter and Cona machines demanded a
different degree of grinding.
In addition to tea and
coffee all the shops sold a variety of
coffee and tea making equipment including
machines for making espresso and
cappuccino coffee, filters, tea caddies,
grinders, strainers and measures. The
stores also sold a small range of biscuits
and a range of preserves made by the Lyons
subsidiary Margetts Foods Ltd. Seven of
the thirty shops had coffee lounges
attached serving morning coffee and
afternoon teas. They also provided light
breakfast and lunch menus specialising on
omelettes, salads toasted buns, Welsh
rarebit, gateaux and cream teas. All
lounges were waitress service and very
British. Some customers were so loyal that
when they moved abroad they arranged for
their teas and coffee supplies to be sent
to them. Importers Retail Salerooms had
customers in America, Australia, Japan,
France, Germany, Holland and Italy.
Importers Retail Showrooms
was bought by Tetley Tea Inc in the 1960s
and came into the Group when Lyons
acquired the Tetley Tea business in 1972.
They operated independently.
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