Does anyone recall doing their grocery shopping at Vye’s?
Of course shops on the High Street are always changing. And we are witnessing a particularly rapid turnaround at the moment as businesses struggle to cope with the fallout from Covid.
But sometimes you come across a reminder of a bygone business that seemed such an institution at the time, only later to completely vanish.
One such was Vye and Son, always known affectionately by shoppers as Vye’s.
It had been founded in Ramsgate in 1817 as a tea and coffee importer. The firm’s first building in Cliff Street was destroyed by enemy bombing on August 14, 1940. A plaque now marks the spot.
The company sought to get an edge over their main rivals, Liptons, by referring to themselves as The Kentish Grocers: the new head office was in Queen Street, Ramsgate, and in the 1960s they had a huge warehouse and distribution centre at Dumpton Park.
It was a progressive business: one of the first grocers to pay its managers by results, one of the first to introduce the idea of self-service, and also one of the first to open a Cash and Carry store for the public.
At their peak in the late
1960s, they had more than 40 stores across Kent, including at West Malling, Cranbrook and Tenterden, where they took over the old Embassy Cinema. But in fact by then they had already been bought out, having sold to Home and Colonial in 1960. Home and Colonial later re-branded as Allied Suppliers which in 1972 was in turn bought out by Cavendish Foods, and then in 1982 by Argyll Foods. Argyll merged with Safeway in 1987.
If you have a photo of a
Vye’s shop, or a memory, email ajsmith@thekmgroup.co.uk