Heinz Baked Beans facts for kids
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A classic meal: Heinz baked beans on toast.
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| Type | Canned food |
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| Owner | Kraft Heinz |
| Country | United Kingdom (actual product) and United States (producer) |
| Introduced | 1886 |
| Tagline | Beans Meanz Heinz created by Maurice Drake |
Heinz Baked Beans are a very popular brand of baked beans made by the H.J. Heinz Company. In the United Kingdom, they have been sold under the shorter name "Heinz Beanz" since 2008. They are a common sight in kitchen cupboards, especially in the UK.
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The Story of Heinz Beanz
The journey of Heinz Baked Beans began in 1886, when they were first sold in the fancy Fortnum & Mason department store in London. The beans were a hit!
Ten years later, in 1896, Heinz opened its first office outside of the United States in London. To keep up with how much people loved their beans, the company opened its first UK factory in Peckham, south London, in 1905. They later opened more factories to make even more beans for everyone.
During World War II (from 1941 to 1948), food was rationed in the United Kingdom. This meant there were limits on how much food people could buy. The government decided that Heinz Baked Beans were an "essential food," making sure people could still get them.
Today, the Heinz factory in Kitt Green, near Wigan, is one of the biggest food factories in Europe. It produces more than one billion cans of food every single year!
A Famous Slogan
In 1967, Heinz came up with one of the most famous advertising slogans in the UK: "Beanz Meanz Heinz". The man who created it, Maurice Drake, said the idea just popped into his head. The slogan became so well-known that in 2008, the company officially changed the product's name to "Heinz Beanz" because, as they said, the original name was "a bit of a mouthful to pronounce."
In 1998, Heinz Baked Beans were voted one of the top 12 brands of the last thousand years in the UK.
However, not every ad campaign was a success. In 2016, an advertisement that showed people using empty bean cans as musical drums was banned. The group in charge of advertising rules decided it was not safe because people might copy the ad and cut themselves on the sharp edges of the cans.
How Are They Made?
The way Heinz makes its baked beans is quite clever. Raw haricot beans and a special tomato sauce are sealed inside the cans first. Then, the sealed cans are cooked in huge pressure cookers.
This method does two things: it cooks the beans and the sauce together perfectly, giving the sauce its famous thick texture. It also makes sure the beans can be stored for a very long time without going bad.
Did you know? A standard 415-gram can of Heinz Baked Beans contains about 465 beans on average.
Health and Safety Questions
In 2001, the UK's Food Standards Agency looked into canned foods to check for a chemical called bisphenol A (BPA). BPA was sometimes used in the plastic lining inside cans to protect the food. The agency found small amounts of it in some cans.
Heinz stated that food safety groups in the UK and Europe said the small levels of BPA were safe. However, the company also promised to look for other materials to use in its cans. By 2019, Heinz UK announced that the cans for its most popular products, including its famous beans, were made without BPA linings.
The Beanz Museum
To celebrate its 150th anniversary, Heinz opened a special museum all about its beans! The Beanz Museum was a temporary "pop-up" exhibit in Covent Garden, London, for a few days in August and September 2019.
Visitors could walk through fun, interactive displays that told the story of Heinz Baked Beans from the very beginning.
