Hintons

Amos Hinton & Sons plc
Public
Industry Retail
Fate Acquired
Successor Presto Foodmarkets
Founded 1871
Defunct 1984
Headquarters Thornaby-on-Tees, United Kingdom
Products Groceries
Parent Argyll Foods

Amos Hinton & Sons plc was a small supermarket company from the North East of England trading as Hintons, it was acquired in a takeover by Argyll Foods in 1984.

History

Early years

The company was founded by Amos Hinton in Middlesbrough in 1871 when he bought out John Birks' shop in South Street.[1] By 1919 the business had expanded such that it had seven stores on Teesside.[1] It went on to buy Winterschladen, a chain of off-licences.[1]

Acquisition by Argyll Foods

The company was acquired by Argyll Foods for £25 million in 1984. At the time the company traded from 55 stores and 30 off-licences. The head office had moved to Thornaby-on-Tees where there was also limited warehousing. There was a distribution centre in Stockton-on-Tees which is still used by Morrisons today. While Hintons own brand products were quickly replaced with Presto brands, the supermarkets continued to trade as Hintons for a short while before all being converted to Presto stores.

The new Hintons store in Guisborough (today a Morrisons) was one of the last to be launched with the Hintons name, the interior of the store having already been fitted out in the Presto format.

Disappearance

The Hintons name disappeared from all of the stores in the same week as the Presto brand was rolled out across Argyll's estate. The Winterschladen name continued to be used on the off licences for many years until those stores were eventually sold and became Victoria Wine stores.[1]

Supermarket locations

The following stores were trading as Hintons at the time of acquisition by Argyll. Unless otherwise stated, stores were originally converted to Presto. The current use of the store where known is shown in parentheses.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Not the weakest link in the chain Northern Echo, 4 October 2003
  2. ↑ Telephone Directories of the early 1980s in North East England, Web search of various retailers' store locations, knowledge of actually visiting 21 of the listed stores
  3. ↑ Eston Precinct traders' fury as Aldi backs out
  4. ↑ Soult's Retail View 26.2.2012
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