Cannings Foods Limited Explained

Cannings Foods Limited was a Trinidad and Tobago company founded in 1912 by Ernest Canning, a British-born businessman.^[1]

The enterprise began as a grocery store. Then it introduced dairy products (including ice cream), baked goods, poultry processing, and soft drinks.

Cannings acquired the Coca-Cola franchise for Trinidad in 1939. The supermarket HiLo, started in 1950, was the first self-service store in Trinidad and Tobago. Cannings was taken over by Neal and Massy in 1975.^[2]

In the 1990s, the Cannings Group ceased to operate – with the exception of the HiLo supermarket. The Cannings soft drink brand was sold to Coca-Cola, and continues to be produced.

Cannings, and its relationship with Coca-Cola, are treated in fictionalized (and renamed) fashion in V. S. Naipaul's 1967 novel The Mimic Men.^[2]

Notes and References

1. News: Ernest Canning: From telephone orders to self-service supermarkets: the evolution of grocery shopping in Trinidad and Tobago . Newsday Historical Digest . 25 June 2000 . 3 April 2007 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070613013810/http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Biography/bio_ErnestHughCanning_supermarketmagnate.htm . 13 June 2007 .
2. Daniel Miller, "Coca-Cola: A black sweet drink from Trinidad", in Daniel Miller, ed., Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter (Routledge, 2002),, pp. 173–175. Excerpts available at Google Books.