Be-Ro facts for kids
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| Private | |
| Industry | Food Manufacturing Flour Milling Recipes |
| Founded | 1875 |
| Headquarters | St Albans, England, United Kingdom |
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Key people
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Thomas Bell, Founder, Inventor |
| Products | Bells Royal Flours, Baking Powder and wholesale. Be-Ro Flours and other food produce. |
| Parent | Premier Foods |
Be-Ro is a well-known company that makes food products. It used to be based in Newcastle upon Tyne, a city in England.
Contents
The Story of Be-Ro
How It All Started
The Be-Ro company was started by a man named Thomas Bell in 1875. He began with a small grocery and tea business in Longhorsley, a village north of Newcastle.
Thomas Bell was very curious. He experimented with different ingredients to make flour rise when baking. His hard work led him to create something amazing: the world's first self-raising flour! This special flour already had the rising ingredients mixed in.
He named his first company Bells Royal and sold his new product as Bell's Royal Flour.
A New Name: Be-Ro
In 1907, Thomas Bell decided to give his special flour a new name. He combined parts of "Bell" and "Royal" to create "Be-Ro." He officially registered this new name.
He started his own manufacturing business in a small place in Newcastle. Besides making self-raising flour, he also produced baking powder. For a while, he even made a "health salt," but he stopped selling that later. Thomas Bell also packaged and sold other foods like dried fruit, cereals, tea, and coffee. He used fun names for these products, such as T.B. Royalty and Black Diamond.
Growing Bigger
As the company grew, it moved to larger buildings in Newcastle. Thomas Bell passed away in 1925. However, his family continued to expand the business. They started selling Be-Ro products in more areas, including Carlisle and all of County Durham and Teesside.
Later, the company built or rented many storage and distribution centers, called depots, across England and Scotland. These depots helped them get their products to more shops and homes. By 1931, they had even set up a base in Nottingham to reach customers in the Midlands.
Joining a Larger Family
In 1958, another company called Rank-Hovis Ltd bought Be-Ro. Then, in 1961, Be-Ro became part of a new, bigger company called RHM.
More recently, in March 2007, Premier Foods took over RHM. This means that Be-Ro is now a brand owned by Premier Foods.
The Famous Be-Ro Recipe Book
When Be-Ro first introduced its self-raising flour, they also created a special recipe book. This book was made to show people how to use their new product in baking.
This recipe book became incredibly popular! It is still sold today and has been updated many times. The current version is its 41st edition, and over 40 million copies have been sold throughout its history. That's a lot of recipes!
More Information
- Official Be-Ro website: http://www.be-ro.co.uk/
