About McVitie's Penguin Caramel
About McVitie's Penguin Caramel
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Packaging Accuracy. We keep product information as accurate and up to date as possible. Manufacturers sometimes change packaging, ingredients, nutritional information, allergen advice, pack sizes or branding without notice, so the product you receive may look slightly different from the images shown. If you have a question about ingredients or allergens before ordering, please get in touch and we will gladly check for you.
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The story of McVitie's Penguin Caramel
The lunchbox stock exchange
Every school lunchbox had a trading floor, and a wrapped chocolate biscuit was the blue-chip stock. Crisps, an apple, half a sandwich: none of it moved the market. You knew what you had, you turned down every offer, and you ate it slowly so the whole table could watch. Then someone at home switched brands and your standing collapsed overnight. So a pack of McVitie's Penguin Caramel turning up on this side of the Atlantic is a small personal victory. Seven of them. Nobody needs to know.
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It started with a shop
The McVitie's story begins in Edinburgh, where Robert McVitie opened a grocer's shop on Rose Street in the 1830s. Not a factory. A shop. The firm became McVitie & Price after Charles Price joined the business, and in 1888 the St Andrews Biscuit Works opened in the Gorgie district of Edinburgh. In 1892 the chief chemist, Alexander Grant, developed the recipe for the McVitie's Digestive. A chemist, working out the biscuit you dunk. That tells you how seriously they took it.
A biscuit tin that kept growing
In 1927 McVitie & Price first produced Jaffa Cakes, named after Jaffa oranges, and quietly started an argument about cakes and biscuits that nobody has won since. In 1948 the firm merged with Macfarlane, Lang & Co. to form United Biscuits. Hobnobs were launched in 1985, with a milk chocolate version following in 1987. United Biscuits was acquired by Turkey's Yıldız Holding in 2014, and McVitie's now operates as part of the pladis global food group.
Meant to last the week
Biscuits in a British house are meant to last the week. They never do. The first goes with a cup of tea while the shopping is still being put away. The second goes because the first one was lovely. By Wednesday someone is standing at the open cupboard insisting there were more, and everyone in the room is suddenly very interested in the ceiling. Hide one at the back. You will thank yourself on Thursday.