WHATEVER HAPPENED TO
The high street is always changing - and we are witnessing a particularly rapid turnaround as firms struggle to cope with the fallout from Covid. But sometimes you come across a reminder of a bygone business that at one time seemed such an institution acr
Vye and Son was founded in Ramsgate in 1817 as a tea and coffee importer by a mother and son. Charles Vye had been a soldier in the Napoleonic wars and then a wine merchant. On his death in 1817 he left his property first to his wife Sarah, who decided to open the tea business. Her son Jesse went into the trade with her, even though he was only 17 at the time.
Their business was on the corner of Queen Street and Cliff Street in Ramsgate, and pretty soon they also acquired a warehouse for their goods opposite.
The firm’s first building was destroyed by enemy bombing on August 14, 1940, during the Second World War. A plaque now marks the spot.
Jesse died in 1863, leaving 11 children. It was the fourth of these, Frederick, who took on the business, opening a second Ramsgate branch at St Lawrence. He died at 47, and his son George took over and embarked on an aggressive expansion programme.
By the turn of the century, he had added shops in Broadstairs, Westgate, Margate, Dover, Ashford and Faversham and there were soon a dozen branches.
The company sought to get an edge over their main rivals, Liptons, by referring to themselves as The Kentish Grocers. They prided themselves on service, even offering free home delivery of all orders. George Vye died with no sons, so he left the business to his daughter Madge and her husband Cecil Stanley James Taylor (known as James Taylor), who continued the expansion programme. By the Second World War, there were 40 stores, but the firm suffered during the conflict. Rationing limited their potential for sales and several of their stores were in coastal areas evacuated for fear of invasion. Then came the bombing that destroyed the firm’s headquarters branch, killing store manager Miles Leach and a passer-by.
After the war, James Taylor handed the business to his two sons, Anthony and Nigel, who rebuilt the Ramsgate store. In 1951, George Vye’s long-living widow, who had retained part-ownership of the business, died at the age of 94, which gave the two Taylor boys the opportunity to
re-shape the firm as a private limited company.
This quickly led to its purchase in 1955 by Home and Colonial, which had also acquired Liptons. In the takeover deal, Anthony was given a seat on the Home and Colonial board, while Nigel became the chairman and managing director of Vye and Son, which nevertheless continued to trade under its own name.
In 1963 it opened a huge warehouse distribution centre at Dumpton Park in Ramsgate, where the company was keen to boast of its modern techniques.
Conveyor belts helped load the 2,500 product lines onto the trucks and the centre had is own packaging unit where 99 varieties of loose goods, which were to be sold under Vye’s own brand name, were packaged by
machine.
Vye and Son was also one of the first grocers to pay its managers by results, as well as introducing the idea of self-service to its stores. It was also the first to open, in 1957, a cash and carry store for the public.
At their peak in 1967, Vye and Son had 61 stores across Kent, 46 of them self-service, including branches at Tonbridge, Folkestone, West Malling, Lydd, Edenbridge, Staplehurst, Rochester, Cranbrook and Tenterden, where they took over the old
Embassy Cinema.
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, but by then the Vye name had completely disappeared.