As we go through the process of rebranding Harrisons, we’re reflecting a lot on the history of our brand and how far we’ve come since the company was first established. Many of you will be familiar with the great taste of Harrisons, but you may not know the story of how we got here, and everything that went into creating the brand you know today. We’ve gone through a lot of evolution as a company, having successes in many areas of the travel and hospitality industry before becoming a key player in the condiments business. That ability to adapt served us well during the recent pandemic, and continues to drive us to innovate and grow into a new chapter of the Harrisons journey.
It all began in the late 1960s, with a man called Harishchandra (Harri) Ramdas Dhutia, an immigrant from India who came to this country with not much money but a lot of ambition. With the help of the local community where he lived, he bought a van and started a grocery business, delivering fresh vegetables to people’s doors. He would go round taking orders, then go down to the docks every morning to collect fresh produce to deliver to his grateful customers. And even before we were an established brand, Harri’s wife was building our legacy of great customer service, frequently visiting customers to make sure that everything in their order was up to standard and nothing was missing.
Eventually, Harri earned enough money to buy a corner shop to sell his groceries in, and it became a hub for the local community. Initially selling just vegetables, the family branched out into spices when their friend asked them to store spice pallets in the back garden but never returned to collect them. (And we can confirm that he hasn’t come back to retrieve them since then, in case you wondered!) Harri had made a name for himself in the local area, and from arriving in the UK with nothing, he was now in a position to buy the business’s first industrial unit and packing machine.
To begin with, the company started supplying goods to businesses in the catering and travel industries, and after Harri’s sons joined the business, they discovered a gap in the market for providing sauces to airlines. So began the enterprise that we now know as Harrisons. Initially, the company bought and sold sauces under older brands, such as Diner’s Delight and The Perfect Complement, until in 2002 we began manufacturing the first of our own sauces. Harri passed away in 2007, and in his memory it was decided that the brand should be named Harrisons (or “Harri’s sons”) as a tribute to him.
Over the next 20 years, we continued to build a reputation for ourselves within the airline industry, and branched out into the bulk condiments market, supplying retail, hospitality and industrial clients. Harri’s grandson, Priyan, joined the business in 2010 and has seen us through huge expansions in our product range - including our great range of mayonnaises, first produced in 2013 - and more recently a worldwide pandemic which brought a lot of turbulence and change with it. Thankfully, we have not only managed to weather the storm, but come back even stronger, and our new rebrand is a testament to that. As we roll out the official rebranding of Harrisons, beginning with our new 970ml sauce bottles, we look forward to a bright future which continues to honour the man who built this business up from nothing and inspires us in everything we do.