Heinz Piccalilli

It's all well and good getting misty eyes about these items but who has had any of them in the last 20, 30, 40 years ??
From 2001-2014 I worked for a food distributor who sold to the discount trade, B&M, Poundland etc and one of our largest contracts was with Premier foods who actually started to produce "Heritage" products exclusively for the discount market. Vesta meals is an example of one

We sold an incredible amount of Fray Bentos tinned pies and these things were utterly disgusting as the vast majority of the cost of the product was the tin
We were then supplied a cheaper alternative, Plumrose tinned pies and if you were lucky, there was actually a tiny piece of meat in this. At least in the Fray bentos you were guaranteed a minimum of four
 
Funny how brands work. I exclusively bought Heinz Beans. Brought up on them as a kid, ate nothing else to the age of 45. Then they racked up the price due after COVID, so I switched to own brand / value.

After three I treat myself to a couple of tins of Heinz this week... hated them. Eurgh. Not right at all.

It's like my entire life was a lie or something.
It's had the more expensive beans replaced by cheaper tomato sauce - criminal deception.
 
From 2001-2014 I worked for a food distributor who sold to the discount trade, B&M, Poundland etc and one of our largest contracts was with Premier foods who actually started to produce "Heritage" products exclusively for the discount market. Vesta meals is an example of one

We sold an incredible amount of Fray Bentos tinned pies and these things were utterly disgusting as the vast majority of the cost of the product was the tin
We were then supplied a cheaper alternative, Plumrose tinned pies and if you were lucky, there was actually a tiny piece of meat in this. At least in the Fray bentos you were guaranteed a minimum of four
Uruguayan high quality grass fed corned beef is impossible to obtain in the UK now, the stuff here is all Brazilian made from sickly cattle scratching around in burned down rainforest.
 
Discontinued, like their vegetable salad - following Rowntrees walnut whips, Cross & Blackwell beans & even Andrews Liver Salts.
Outrageous
View attachment 125055
So has Haywards piccalilli. Haywards do other things but have discontinued their piccalilli. I also liked Heinz too, but I see this has now gone. Not keen on Branston piccalilli, it’s just not as nice.
 
Uruguayan high quality grass fed corned beef is impossible to obtain in the UK now, the stuff here is all Brazilian made from sickly cattle scratching around in burned down rainforest.

My boss the company owner, was a dreadful salesman, which is why he employed people like myself, but he was a fabulous commodity buyer
I was sat with him one day and the Princes food account manager phoned with a deal on tinned red salmon
My boss wrote the figures down and said "Yes, I'll take it" It was a million and a half quid at cost price

To go back to disgusting
He was trying to get a deal over the line with Princes on their tinned hot dogs. The Princes account manager was insistent the cost was going up, my boss was insistent it was going down
My boss suggested that Princes technical dept look at doing something with the size of the tin or hot dogs and then suggested "why not put seven in a tin instead of eight?" Again, this was another million pound deal
A couple of weeks later, the Princes guy came back with an answer of "No, can't do anything, as the cost of producing an actual hot dog was a quarter of a penny"
The vast majority of the cost was the tin, the brine and transportation

Since then, my advice has been, when buying any tinned meat product, always check the label to see if it's "mechanically extracted"
If it is, then it is the left over crap that's blasted off the bones of the animal
 
My boss the company owner, was a dreadful salesman, which is why he employed people like myself, but he was a fabulous commodity buyer
I was sat with him one day and the Princes food account manager phoned with a deal on tinned red salmon
My boss wrote the figures down and said "Yes, I'll take it" It was a million and a half quid at cost price

To go back to disgusting
He was trying to get a deal over the line with Princes on their tinned hot dogs. The Princes account manager was insistent the cost was going up, my boss was insistent it was going down
My boss suggested that Princes technical dept look at doing something with the size of the tin or hot dogs and then suggested "why not put seven in a tin instead of eight?" Again, this was another million pound deal
A couple of weeks later, the Princes guy came back with an answer of "No, can't do anything, as the cost of producing an actual hot dog was a quarter of a penny"
The vast majority of the cost was the tin, the brine and transportation

Since then, my advice has been, when buying any tinned meat product, always check the label to see if it's "mechanically extracted"
If it is, then it is the left over crap that's blasted off the bones of the animal
I'll stick to sardines then ;-)
 

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top
  AdBlock Detected
Bluemoon relies on advertising to pay our hosting fees. Please support the site by disabling your ad blocking software to help keep the forum sustainable. Thanks.