That fashionable mag Harper’s Bazaar recently compiled a list (the sort of thing they do) of 10 of the favourite places in London that good Queen Elizabeth likes to shop at. They are, in no particular order, Smythson❅ (luxury leather goods and stationery for the Royal quill); Hunter (Wellington boots that QEII likes to drag on for traversing her Scottish estates); Launer London (the Royal handbag – apparently she has 200 of them); Barbour (her coats – there’s just one particular type of coat that Liz has been faithful to for the entire duration of a Diamond Jubilee and then some!); Anello and Davide of Kensington (shoes); Fulton (umbrellas); John Lewis (haberdashery and household goods); Rigby and Peller (suppliers of the Queen’s lingerie for 59 years); Corgi Hosiery (no, not stockings for HRM’s favourite “pampered pooches”, but socks for the Royal feet); Dubonnet (Liz stocks up on gin and Dubonnet⊞ for her favourite cocktails).

A household name in British retail trading since the time of Queen Anne

But there is another London retailer whose royal connexion for sheer staying power puts all of these businesses in the shade. Fortnum and Mason have long held sway as the Royals’ grocer of choice, starting with the family matriarch Queen Victoria in the 1860s, through to (until recently) the present ‘shopaholic‘ monarch.

F&M, 1957 [Source: Getty image]

The company’s history goes back even further—to the year 1707. In that year tenant (and latent entrepreneur) William Fortnum and his landlord Hugh Mason formed what was to become a momentous business partnership. At that time Mason was already operating a small store in St James Market for two years. The new store at 181 Piccadilly was the start of a retail innings that has now stretched 312 years and counting. Over that epoch of time Fortnum and Mason or F&M can (and has listed) a commendable catalogue of achievements, including:

🔸 introduced the Scotch egg in 1738— proving to be a highly portable snack/meal, just right for long distance journeys—as were F&M’s famous hampers

🔸 functioned as an official post office as well as a retail store – from 1794 up to 1839 when Britain established the General Post Office (GPO)

🔸 Queen Victoria chose F&M as her exclusive purveyor to despatch supplies of food to Florence Nightingale’s soldier patients in her field hospitals in the Crimean War (1856)

🔸 in a deal with the American HJ Heinz company, F&M in its role as stockists of tinned goods, introduced the humble baked bean to the British Isles (1886)

🔸 helped to bring variety to the British tea palate by introducing a range of south Asian teas (Indian and Ceylonese) to Britain for the first time including a new “Royal Blend” in honour of Edward VII (1902)

🔸 sent food hampers to imprisoned suffragettes (who had smashed the windows of the Fortnum store in protest, demonstrating apparently that F&M could turn the other cheek) (1911)

🔸 more predictably, they also sent hampers to soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders during WWI (1914)

🔸 one of the things F&M is most proud about is its role as a supplier of expeditions, it supplied George Mallory’s failed attempt to climb Mt Everest in 1924, as well as other expeditions in Africa. To extend the alpine theme, F&M in 1930 added a mini sky slope for promotional value to the Third floor of the Piccadilly store

21st century Fortnum, an era of belated expansion

In 2007 F&M celebrated its tercentenary with a long-overdue refurbishment of its flagship store – a makeover costing £24 million ☉.

[Photo: www.londontown.com]

Finally, during this decade F&M made the move toward a multi-store structure. In 2013 and 2014 branch stores were opened in St Pancreas International Station and Heathrow Terminal 5 respectively. This was followed by an international presence. Dubai opened an F&M store in 2014 and just this year the company made its biggest venture on the world stage yet, opening F&M Hong Kong.

The Foie gras controversy

As a grocer F&M has pursued a market strategy of providing quality (definitely not inexpensive) groceries (“posh nosh”) and luxury (and sometimes exotic) niche food items (eg, ready-to-eat luxury meals such as fresh poultry or game in aspic jelly). This has occasionally led the retailer to become embroiled in controversy. In 2010 F&M earned the opprobrium of animal rights group PETA UK who (enlisting the support of some celebrity Britons) demonstrated against F&M‘s Foie gras product. The protestors were unhappy that the retailer did not alert consumers to the cruel method of force-feeding geese and ducks to produce the product. F&M, despite the pressure exerted on it, doggedly refused to discontinue the line.

The company has been the subject of other controversies of recent. F&M has been tangled up with the brouhaha of allegations of tax avoidance by its parent company’s subsidiaries. This resulted in a mass sit-in in F&Ms Piccadilly store by UK Uncut (a lobby group protesting public service cuts and tax avoidance).

Severing of ties with the Windsors and more bad publicity

In 2018 Buckingham Palace stopped providing meat from its Royal Farms at Windsor Park to F&M…it was unhappy with F&M’s practice of bullying its suppliers to squeeze prices down. However F&M did not pass this on to consumers, continuing to assert that its bacon, pork and lamb (at double the supermarket price!) was sourced from HM’s Windsor Farms. The company had to grovel apologetically to Buck Palace, and with regal ill-will compounded, thus its 150-year tenure as the Royal family’s grocer was finito.

PostScript: A British institution but not a British-owned one

Despite its Royal association and status as a “national institution“, a part of the retailing firmament in the UK, F&M has long been foreign owned. In 1951 it was acquired by a Canadian businessman, W Garfield Weston. Today F&M is still in Canadian hands, privately owned by Wittington Investments Ltd which also owns the discount clothing store Primark.

181 Piccadilly, St James’s, W1A 1ER   

Reference material:

“Fortnum & Mason: The First 312 Years”, www.fortnumandmason.com

“10 places the Queen does her shopping”, Harper’s Bazaar, 15-May-2018, www.harpersbazaar.com

“After 150 years as the royal grocery, Fortnum and Mason is ditched by the Queen and forced to apologise over Windsor meat scandal”, Sebastian Shakespeare, Daily Mail, 29-Sep-2014, www.dailymail.co.uk

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❅ Smythson’s are especially blessed by the British Crown, being the recipients of no less than four Royal warrants

⊞ a French red wine

☉ the following year F&M installed bee hives in the rooftop of the store!