History

Welcome to Atkinsons - Our story began in the auspicious year of 1837 when a young Queen came to the throne of an empire on which the Sun never set. Tea, coffee, sugar & all kinds of exotic spices came from the four corners of the globe to land on St George's quay in the City Palatine of Lancaster. A boom town that had just built 60 warships on the banks of the Lune in the last twenty years of the Napoleonic Wars, which explains why, to this very day, there are no trees in the Forest of Bowland.

With no more Human Traffic being brought into the Hanging Town, a young Quaker named Thomas Atkinson thought it a good place to open his "Grasshopper Tea Warehouse - also for the sale of coffee, spices, refined sugar & London prepared chocolate" - as the half-page ad on the front of the newly opened Lancaster Guardian proclaimed. He named the company J. Atkinson & Co. after the love of his life, his young wife Jane. With his logo, the quality mark of a Grasshopper & his slogan, a mission statement for excellence - "The Grasshopper only eats the Finest of Leaves" - it could be argued that the media-savvy Tom had the point of difference over the six other Tea Merchants already plying their trade in the city at that time. Not got long was he to remain at his first address of No. 1 Cheapside…

Welcome to Atkinsons - Our story began in the auspicious year of 1837 when a young Queen came to the throne of an empire on which the Sun never set. Tea, coffee, sugar & all kinds of exotic spices came from the four corners of the globe to land on St George's quay in the City Palatine of Lancaster. A boom town that had just built 60 warships on the banks of the Lune in the last twenty years of the Napoleonic Wars, which explains why, to this very day, there are no trees in the Forest of Bowland.

With no more Human Traffic being brought into the Hanging Town, a young Quaker named Thomas Atkinson thought it a good place to open his "Grasshopper Tea Warehouse - also for the sale of coffee, spices, refined sugar & London prepared chocolate" - as the half-page ad on the front of the newly opened Lancaster Guardian proclaimed. He named the company J. Atkinson & Co. after the love of his life, his young wife Jane. With his logo, the quality mark of a Grasshopper & his slogan, a mission statement for excellence - "The Grasshopper only eats the Finest of Leaves" - it could be argued that the media-savvy Tom had the point of difference over the six other Tea Merchants already plying their trade in the city at that time. Not got long was he to remain at his first address of No. 1 Cheapside…