Jacob's

Jacob's is an Irish brand of biscuits and crackers primarily sold in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Jacob's is owned in the Irish market by Jacob Fruitfield Food Group, part of Valeo Foods; in the UK market by United Biscuits, part of Pladis; and in the Asian market by Mondelēz International.

Jacob's "1885" registered trademark used on several lines of biscuits

For other uses of "Jacobs", see Jacobs (disambiguation).

History

View of the production floor, Jacob's Ireland factory, 1910

Jacob's originated in the mid-nineteenth century as a small bread and sea-biscuit bakery run by William Beale Jacob in Waterford, Ireland. William's brother Robert joined the business in 1851, forming the partnership of W. & R. Jacob. In 1852, the brothers acquired new premises at Peter's Row in Dublin, Ireland, and in 1853 opened the W. & R. Jacob's Steam Biscuit Factory.^[1] The Dublin factory was one of several prominent buildings occupied by rebels during the Easter Rising in 1916.^[2]

Jacob's cream crackers

Jacob's first English factory opened in 1914 in Aintree, Liverpool, and remains the primary UK producer of Jacob's products including Cream Crackers and Twiglets.^[3] In 1922, a separate English company was formed and the Dublin and Liverpool branches separated. After the separation, the Dublin branch retained the name W. & R. Jacob while the Liverpool branch became known as Jacob's Bakery Ltd.^[4]

From the 1960s to the early 2000s, both bakeries underwent a series of mergers. In 1960, Jacob's Bakery joined Associated Biscuits, which was purchased by Nabisco in 1982.^[5] Associated Biscuits was subsequently acquired by Danone in 1989 and renamed The Jacob's Bakery Ltd. Meanwhile, W. & R. Jacob merged with Boland's Bakery in the 1970s to form Irish Biscuits Ltd., and in 1973 moved to a factory in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght.^[1]: 19:15

In 1991, the two companies again came under common ownership when Irish Biscuits was also acquired by Danone.^[4] In 2004, Danone and United Biscuits announced that they had made an agreement for the latter to acquire the UK and Ireland operations of Irish Biscuits and Jacob's Biscuits brands, known collectively as the Jacob's Biscuit Group.^[6][7] Just days after the acquisition was announced, however, Danone, United Biscuits, and Fruitfield Foods reported that Jacob's Biscuit Group would be split, with United Biscuits acquiring only the UK portion of the group and Fruitfield Foods acquiring the Irish portion.^[8][9][10] Fruitfield Foods was subsequently renamed the Jacob Fruitfield Food Group and is now part of the Valeo Food Group, which was established in September 2010 through the merger of Batchelors and Origin Foods.^[11] In 2014, United Biscuits was acquired by Pladis, a subsidiary of the Istanbul-based conglomerate, Yıldız Holding.^[12]

Irish visitors to Manchester peruse Irish products for sale, including Jacob's biscuits, at the Irish World Heritage Centre, Cheetham Hill

Outside of the UK and Ireland, Danone retained Jacob's brand ownership in Asia, operating a manufacturing facility in Malaysia until its biscuit division was acquired by Kraft Foods in 2007. Following that acquisition, production and sales of Jacob's biscuits in Malaysia are undertaken by Mondelēz.

In 2015, the Jacob's factory in Liverpool reported producing over 55,000 tonnes of products each year,^[13] and in 2022 reported producing 4,000 tonnes of crackers each year.^[14] In 2015, the Liverpool factory received a £10 million investment from United Biscuits to further boost output.^[15]

Industrial relations

The activist and trade union organiser Rosie Hackett worked as a messenger at Jacob's for some years in the early twentieth century. At that time, working conditions in the Dublin factory were poor. On 22 August 1911, Hackett helped organise the withdrawal of women's labour in the Jacob's factory to support their male colleagues who were already on strike. With the women's help, the men secured better working conditions and a pay rise. Two weeks later, at the age of eighteen, Hackett co-founded the Irish Women Worker's Union (IWWU) with Delia Larkin. During the Dublin-wide 1913 Lockout, Hackett helped mobilise workers at Jacob's to come out in solidarity with other workers; Jacob's workers were in turn were locked out by their own employers. In 1914, Jacob's sacked Hackett because of her role in the Lockout.^[16]

In 2009, after 156 years of making biscuits in Ireland, Jacob Fruitfield shut its Tallaght plant. As a result of the closure, 220 jobs were lost, with the company retaining around 100 staff in a variety of roles.^[17]

In November 2022, workers at the Aintree factory went on strike after pay negotiations with management failed to reach an agreement after three months of negotiations. Workers were on strike for 11 weeks, backed by the GMB union.^[18] During the strike, the company temporarily shifted some production to Portugal.^[14] In 2023, Pladis announced plans for job cuts, beginning with a phase of voluntary redundancies through the end of 2025.^[19] GMB reported that 361 of around 760 workers were to be made redundant under the plan.^[18]

Products

Toppable crackers

• Cream crackers
• Biscuits For Cheese
• Savoury Favourites
• Flatbreads
  • Salt & Pepper
  • Mixed Seeds
• Crispbreads
  • Chive
  • Mixed Seed
  • Mixed Grain
• Ciabatta
  • Sundried Tomato & Basil
  • Original
• Krackawheat
• Choice Grain
• Sourdough
• Butter Puffs
• Cornish Wafers
• High Fibre

Snackable crackers

• Savours
  • Salt and Pepper
  • Sour Cream & Chive
  • Cheese
  • Sweet Chilli
• Cheddars
  • Pickle
  • Cheese
  • Smoky BBQ

Mini Cheddars

Main article: Mini Cheddars

• Mini Cheddars Original 6 Pack
• Mini Cheddars Red Leicester 6 Pack
• Mini Cheddars Smoky BBQ 6 Pack
• Mini Cheddars Nacho Cheese & Jalapeño
• Mini Cheddars Chipotle Chicken Wings
• Mini Cheddars Lime & Chilli
• Mini Cheddars Strathdon Blue Cheese
• Mini Cheddars Dragon's Breath Chilli Cheddar
• Mini Cheddars Ploughman's Cheshire Cheese

Mini Cheddars Sticks

• Rich & Tangy Cheddar
• Grilled Cheddar & Sizzling Steak

Cracker Crisps

• Salt & Vinegar
• Sour Cream & Chive
• Sour Cream & Chive Caddies

Bites

• Red Leicester
• Mature Cheddar & Caramelised Onion
• Smoked Paprika
• Sweet Chilli & Sour Cream

Crinklys

• Variety Pack (6 Pack including 2 × Cheese & Onion, 2 × Chilli Beef and 2 × Salt & Vinegar)
• Cheese & Onion 6 Pack

Twiglets

Main article: Twiglets

• Twiglets Multipack
• Twiglets Caddies

Cheeselets

• Cheeselets Caddies
• Cheeselets 125g

Mallow biscuits

• Mikado, featuring marshmallow, desiccated coconut and raspberry jam
• Kimberley, ginger flavour biscuits sandwiching a mallow center which has a coarse sugar crystal coating
• Elite, a chocolate-enrobed Mikado. (Other Elite variants are available.)
• Coconut cream, biscuits with a Pink and White a mallow center and a desiccated coconut coating
• X's & O's, sold in phases during the 1970s and 1990s
• Camelot, square version of Mikado, sold during the late 1980s and early 1990s
• Chocolate Mallows

Other biscuits

• Digestive
• Fig Rolls during the late 1980s there were Fruity Bites, Apple Rolls in the early to mid 1990s, Chocolate version of them in the mid-1990s or a bar version in the early 2000s
• Polo
• Rich Tea
• Shortbread
• Shortcake
• Goldgrain
• Crunchers originally sold in the 1980s and 1990s back in the shops in 2025.
• Rings
• Ginger Nut
• Lincoln
• Marietta
• Windmill lasted for a short time in the early 1980s
• Lemon Puff
• Custard cream
• Bourbon
• Nice
• Wafer used for an ice cream sandwich
• Jaffa Cakes

Bars

• Club Milk have a Dark, Original, Orange, Mint, White Chocolate versions, as well as Wafer and Chunky versions
• Trio
• Busker (1984–1987)
• Telax sold during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s

Advertising

From the mid-1970s, Jacob's ran a number of notable advertisements with recognisable hooks, jingles, and tag-lines. On Irish television, one popular phrase was "How To Get The Fig Into The Fig Rolls." In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Frank Kelly and Maureen Potter featured in a series of adverts; in one of these, a German professor (Kelly) visits South America where a disagreement ensues over the pronunciation of "Jacob's." Around 1975, another advert encouraged taking a break with Club Milk: as the jingle ran, Club Milk is "best after all." In the mid-1980s, an advert for Telax bars made use of a space science theme, while in the late 1980s and early '90s Jacob's aired a popular series of adverts with the tag-line "Take The Biscuit." In 1992, the Chocolate Collection was advertised with a jingle stating that "It's The Same Chocolate With A Different Biscuit Under It." Around the same time, Camelot biscuits were advertised with a Children of Lir themed cartoon. In the late 2000s, "Some kind Of Wonderful" became a common tag-line in Jacob's adverts.

See also

• Jacob's Awards