Irreplaceable condiments, one-of-a-kind snacks and truly revolutionary products – our supermarkets are filled with foods that most will recognise in an instant. Whether invented by accident or out of necessity, these brands have stood the test of time and are among some of the most consumed foods in the world. Take a look as we count down the world's best food brands, in loveFOOD's opinion, based on their popularity and longevity.
Knorr’s history dates back to 1838, when Carl Heinrich Knorr opened a factory in Heilbronn, Germany and the business started off supplying chicory to the coffee industry, but veered in a new direction after an experiment with drying vegetables, herbs and other seasonings. By 1873 the first Knorr dried packet soups were launched across Europe and, in 1912, the pioneering Knorr bouillon or stock cubes the brand has become best-known for arrived. Australians will recognise the brand by the name Continental, while in Indonesia it's called Royco.
Surprising to most people, this iconic candy brand was founded in Spain in 1958 when inventor Enric Bernat started producing the lollipops and sold them in their recognisable striped packaging. The original flavours were strawberry, orange, lemon, strawberry and cream, chocolate and vanilla, coffee and cream, and mint. As of 2001, four billion lollipops a year were sold to 170 countries with more than 100 different flavours available.
You might be surprised to find that James Lewis Kraft, the man behind everyone's favourite boxed pasta, didn’t invent macaroni cheese or processed cheese. However, he was the first to patent emulsified and powdered cheese when he had the idea for Kraft Dinner Macaroni & Cheese. Hitting the shelves in 1937, during the Great Depression, it was an instant success as a family of four could eat dinner for less than 14p ($0.19) and in the first year, eight million boxes were sold. Today, more than one million boxes are sold daily.
In 1877, Quaker Oats was registered as the first trademark for a breakfast cereal with the US Patent Office noting its branding featured “a figure of a man in ‘Quaker garb’”. The mill in Ravenna, Ohio went bankrupt in less than five years, but Henry Parsons Crowell bought the mill and secured the Quaker name. In 1888 it was incorporated under the American Cereal Company, which changed its name to The Quaker Oats Company in 1901. The brand remains synonymous with porridge oats and the man in Quaker garb is still a familiar sight in cereal aisles around the world.
Golden syrup has been around since 1883 when Charles Eastick, a chemist at Abram Lyle & Sons, was perfecting a method of refining cane sugar and discovered the sticky, gilded syrup as a by-product. It was sold as golden syrup two years later and by 1921, when Abram Lyle & Sons merged with Henry Tate & Sons, dominated the market. Lyle’s Golden Syrup was officially recognised by Guinness World Records in 2006 as being Britain’s oldest brand and having the world's oldest branding and packaging.
You may be surprised to know, Del Monte’s first product wasn’t fruit cocktail or even tinned pineapple, but coffee which it supplied to the prestigious Hotel Del Monte in Monterey, California. It didn't actually start canning fruit until 1892. In 1907, Del Monte built what was to be the largest fruit and vegetable cannery in the world at the time. Ahead of the curve, in 1971 Del Monte became the first major US food producer to put nutritional values on its food products and today Del Monte is still one of the leading producers of premium canned foods.
Maggi's beginnings are found in 1886 when Julius Maggi created a combination of seasonings that could easily and conveniently enhance the taste of meals. The government asked him to create quick, nutritious products as female employment increased, and his answer was instant soups and, later, a broth and the brand’s now-iconic Liquid Seasoning. Today, it’s one of the world’s leading convenience foods brands and, according to Nestlé who owns the brand, an average of 4,600 meals are prepared with Maggi products around the world every second.
The Dr. Oetker logo might be most familiar to some emblazoned on a pizza box, but the brand began with baking powder. Pharmacist Dr August Oetker founded the company in Bielefeld, Germany in 1891, introducing his first product two years later. His innovation was filling small paper bags with the precise quantity of baking powder required for baking with a pound (around 0.5kg) of flour to guarantee perfect baking results.
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Founded in 1903 in Le Sueur, Minnesota, Green Giant (also known as Le Sieur in Canada) produces all manner of vegetable products, but none is more synonymous with the brand than its canned sweetcorn. While most of the corn sold in the US is still grown in Minnesota, a plant was set up in southern France in 1977 to supply Europe. The brand's popularity across the world is best described in numbers. Nearly 65% of Americans eat at least one Green Giant product in a month while in the UK around one in every four households consumes their products.
De Cecco's story began in 1886 in Abruzzo, Italy, when De Cecco brothers established the company. Fast-forward to the Second World War and the factory was razed to the ground by German bomb attacks. After the war, it was rebuilt along with a new factory in Pescara to meet the growing demand. Today, apart from the wide range of pasta products, the company also produces oil and vinegar, various tomato and pasta sauces as well as condiments, like pesto, which has led to De Cecco becoming the third-largest pasta-producing company in the world.
This American-style pale lager was introduced to the world in 1876 by a German-native Adolphus Busch, who had emigrated to America some 20 years earlier. The company, started by Adolphus' father-in-law was renamed Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association in 1879 and the rest is history. Nicknamed the King of Beers, Budweiser's initial success was largely down to the fact that most beer in the US at the time was quite dark and heavy, but this crisp lager was perfect for hot St Louis summers. In 2020, it was the most valuable beer brand in the world.
The origins of this chocolate brand stretch back to 1845, when David Sprüngli and son produced the first solid bar of chocolate in a small confectionery shop in Zürich. Few decades later Rodolphe Lindt opened a shop in Berne, pioneering a coaching process that churned together cocoa mass and butter with sugar and milk over a longer period for a silky smooth texture. The two inventors joined forces at the end of the 19th century and now the company, named Lindt & Sprüngli, is one of the world’s leading premium chocolate brands.
The world's leading vodka brand, Smirnoff traces its origins to a distillery in Moscow where Pyotr Smirnov started distilling vodka in 1864. The drink soon became popular due to the fact it was filtered through charcoal columns five times – more than any competitor. Once Russia imposed a dry law in 1914, Pyotr's son Vladimir started seeking opportunities elsewhere until he settled in Nice, France, changed the name to Smirnoff and began production of vodka. Today, Smirnoff vodka and its other vodka drinks are sold in more than 130 countries worldwide.
Not many brands can boast such a rich history like Twinings. A royal warrant holder since 1837, Twinings has the world's oldest continually used company logo and is London's longest-standing ratepayer (a type of taxpayer in the UK), having occupied the same premises on the Strand since 1706. Started by Thomas Twining, who handled early shipments of tea and learned his skills from an East India Company merchant Thomas D'Aeth, the company singlehandedly turned a nation of coffee lovers into tea drinkers. The brand also invented the famous Earl Grey blend, named after Charles Grey at whose request the blend was created in 1831.
Among tinned foods few are as iconic as Spam. Invented in 1937 as a way to use up pork shoulder, then an unpopular cut, it became hugely popular in wartime kitchens. It proved a cheap and convenient way to ship meat to the front lines and quickly became associated with the war effort, as a staple food among rations of US and other Allied troops. In home kitchens it was used in everything from spaghetti dinners to breakfasts. Today, there are 12.8 cans of Spam products eaten every second.
Carnation’s Condensed Milk – made with milk that has been evaporated to thicken it, then sweetened – has always proved handy in the kitchen. Evaporated milk (without added sugar) was invented in the 1880s by Johann Baptist Meyenberg, who worked for the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company in Switzerland. The company was unenthusiastic, so Meyenberg moved to the US and set up the Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Company in 1899, launching canned evaporated milk under the Carnation label the same year. The product was practically a wartime hero, too, with its high fat, protein and sugar content making it ideal for field rations.
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After learning about the Inuit method of preserving fish by flash-freezing it during his travels in Newfoundland, Clarence Birdseye was determined to bring this practice to the US and soon his Quick Freeze Machine was patented. The company was established in 1922, but was sold on in 1929 and continued to grow into the brand we know today. Birds Eye's factory in Great Yarmouth in the UK was responsible for inventing the fish finger – one of the most famous and popular Birds Eye products. Since their inception, more than 15 billion fish fingers have been sold in the UK alone.
Introduced to the world in 1921, Betty Crocker quickly became America's First Lady of Food, sharing tasty family baking recipes. By the 1940s, the fictional homecook was the second-best known woman in America and a name nine out of 10 Americans recognised instantly. Although cake mix boxes had been around since the 1930s, the trend properly took off when Betty Crocker introduced ginger cake mix in 1947, followed by devil's food and party cake. The red spoon symbol of quality made its first appearance in 1945 and today is on more than 200 products sold across the world.
Developed in 1912 by the National Biscuit Company (today known as Nabisco), the first Oreo was sold as part of a top-end biscuit package alongside Mother Goose Biscuits and Veronese Biscuits – now both long forgotten. Two Oreo flavours were originally rolled out – lemon meringue and crème-filled – but while at the time only the crème-filled Oreos succeeded, today the brand sells 14 different flavours in the US alone. Available in more than a hundred countries, over 40 billion Oreo cookies are produced ever year, which is enough to circle the Earth five times.
Invented by a Worcester chemist duo John Wheeley Lea and William Perrins, Worcestershire sauce's origins have been somewhat disputed. The common story starts with Lord Sandys, a British aristocrat, who upon his return from India in 1835, asked the chemists to recreate a recipe he had encountered. The chemists obliged, but found the sauce to be far too pungent. For some reason Lea and Perrins left the sauce in the basement of their shop but when they came across it a few years later, it had mellowed and developed a rich, savoury flavour. It was clear they were on to something and the first bottles of Worcestershire sauce hit the shelves of their chemist shop in 1837.
In the 1860s, US government offered incentives for families to move west and grow corn so many packed up and settled in Kentucky. This included the Böhm family (later Beam) who had emigrated from Germany. Jacob Beam used his father’s whiskey recipe to turn his excess corn crop into bourbon whiskey and started selling it with great success. Prohibition brought production to a sharp halt but when it was repealed in 1933, then-owner James 'Jim' Beam got the business back up and running, rebuilding the distillery in just 120 days. Safeguarding the company’s future, he took a jug of his yeast home every weekend – and to this day the same yeast culture is used.
Did you know this iconic British spread was invented by accident? In the late 19th century German scientist Justus von Liebig discovered that brewer's yeast could be concentrated, bottled and eaten. Soon after the Marmite Food Company was established in Burton-On-Trent, England and yeast from local breweries was mixed with salt, spices and celery. Included in soldiers' rations in both World Wars, Marmite's manufacturing process is secret to this day. However, Marmite isn't unique – you'll find similar products like Vegex in the US, Cenovis in Switzerland and, of course, Vegemite – an Australian product developed during Marmite shortage in the early 1920s.
The sweet energy drink known for its hefty caffeine content was launched in 1987 in Austria, taking inspiration from a Thai drink Krating Daeng, which was popular among truck drivers and labourers. Adapted to Western palates and with slightly modified ingredients, Red Bull fast became one of the most popular drinks on the planet, in part thanks to the company's brilliant marketing, attracting extreme sports stars and celebrity endorsements. It’s still the best-selling energy drink in the world with nearly eight billion cans sold just last year.
Invented by Momofuku Ando, founder of Japanese food company Nissin, in 1958, Cup Noodles (then known as Cup O' Noodles) arrived in the US in 1970. The famous foam cup was introduced in 1971 and three original flavours were launched – beef, chicken and shrimp. It fast became an indispensable and affordable meal for students as well as struggling families and gained a cult status in popular culture. The world's leading cup-type instant noodle brand, Cup Noodles had sold more than 40 billion instant ramen cups by 2016.
Born to Jewish parents in Poland, Reuben Mattus migrated to New York City alongside his widowed mother in 1921. By 1929 Reuben was already selling ice pops and chocolate-covered ice cream bars and sandwiches from a horse-drawn wagon in The Bronx. The company was established in 1959 with a focus on high-end luxury ice cream and was launched with three original flavours – vanilla, chocolate and coffee. Today, there are 46 flavours available and over 800 Häagen-Dazs shops around the world.
A German confectionery company founded in 1920, Haribo is known the world over for its Goldbears gummy bears, Starmix and Tangfastics sweets. Actually an acronym formed from Hans Riegel (the founder) and Bonn (the city where it was founded), Haribo's first gummy bears landed in stores in 1922. It wasn't until the 1980s and 1990s that Haribo sweets arrived in the US and the UK, but since then the company has expanded to more than 100 countries and now makes 100 million Goldbears every day.
Barilla is the world’s biggest producer of pasta and, like many longstanding food brands, had humble beginnings. It started with a small bread and pasta shop opened by Pietro Barilla in Parma, Italy in 1877. Initially the shop supplied the local community with homemade produce but expanded after the founder’s two sons took over and opened the first factory in 1910. In 1969 the brand built the world’s largest production plant, capable of producing 1,000 tonnes of pasta per day. Today, Barilla pasta is sold in nearly a hundred countries.
It’s hard to miss the sunny bottles of French’s classic yellow mustard. They’re ubiquitous in supermarkets, in diners and at sports events around the globe. The (then) small company, from Rochester, New York, introduced its tangy mustard to the globe at the St Louis World Fair in 1904, serving it on hot dogs. It soon became widely available and was first sold in glass bottles. The squeezy plastic bottle known today came in 1991, making it easier for the mustard to be squirted onto hot dogs and burgers, while the current shape was designed in 2002.
The famous nougat, peanut and caramel chocolate bar was launched by Mars in the US in 1930. It was named after its founders Frank and Ethel’s racehorse Snickers. Sold under the name Marathon in the UK and Ireland until 1990, Snickers claims to be the world's best-selling candy bar. In fact, it's so popular that more than 400 million individual bars were sold in 2012 alone.
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Quaker John Cadbury launched his iconic brand in Birmingham, England in 1824, selling tea, coffee and drinking chocolate, prepared with a pestle and mortar. Cadbury received its Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria in 1854, but the company went into decline until the introduction of chocolate Easter eggs and better-quality cocoa beans. The biggest breakthrough though was the introduction of the Dairy Milk chocolate bar in 1905. The idea was to create a bar with more milk than any other on the market and since its inception the bar been sold in more than 40 countries in its distinctive purple wrapper.
A natural salesman at the age of 10, Herman Lay started his first business selling soft drinks opposite the ballpark in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. Fast forward to the 1930s and Lay’s had grown into a household name in the southern states. Meanwhile, Charles Elmer Doolin had started selling Fritos the same year as Lay. Three decades later the two men joined forces to form Frito-Lay and their crisp-making venture became international. The crisps are known as Smith's in Australia and Walkers in the UK, where it's the leading crisp brand.
Although started in 1869, Campbell's Soup Company, or Campbell's, didn't really thrive until the Second World War. It provided army rations, while housewives back home swore by the brand's soup range for quick and easy family suppers. One of the favourites was Chicken Noodle, which got its name thanks to a radio presenter misreading the intended name Noodle with Chicken. In the last year, the brand's soups have become a hit once more as consumers looked for comfort, familiarity and convenience. The company reported a 35% increase in its sales of soup in the US alone in the first quarter of 2020.
"The Great American Chocolate Bar", Hershey’s Milk Chocolate was launched in 1900. It took much trial and error to create the formula as chocolate recipes were a closely guarded secret by the Swiss at the time. But it took seven more years for the brand to introduce its most famous product, Hershey's Kisses. They were supposedly named after the machine which produces them and makes a kissing noise as it dispenses chocolate onto the conveyor belt. By the 1980s Kisses was the fifth most popular chocolate in the US and today more than 70 million candies are produced each day.
The world's favourite coffee, as described by Nescafé itself, was first launched in Switzerland in 1938 after Nestlé was challenged to help preserve the surplus coffee beans in Brazil. As soon as the Second World War started, Nescafé became a staple in the food rations of the US forces as it was mess-free and quick to prepare. After the war, the coffee expanded into Europe and launched new products like Nescafé Gold and Taster's Choice in North America – it also travelled to the top of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary and to the Moon along with the crew of Apollo 11. Today, it's sold in over 180 countries.
One of Mars' many brilliant products, M&M's came into being when the founder's son Forrest saw soldiers snacking on a similar candy during the Spanish Civil War. The idea was perfect – the coloured shell surrounding the chocolate prevented it from melting so Mars patented its own process and production began in 1941. The brand's first clients were the US Army who were exclusively supplied with M&M's during the Second World War but as soon as the war was over, it came into households across the US and went international in the 1980s. Today, around 400 million individual M&M's are made daily.
Evian's beginnings stretch as far back as 1789 when a local French nobleman Marquis de Lessert was out on a walk in the town of Évian-les-Bains. To quench his thirst, he drank water from a spring and, impressed by how light it was, he started drinking it regularly. Word, of course, got out and Monsieur Cachat (on whose land the spring was located) began bottling and selling the water to the local community. Soon the first thermal spa opened, followed by a bottling facility in 1826. Fast forward to today and Evian water is available in more than 140 countries and was the first Danone brand to be certified carbon neutral in 2017.
You might be surprised to find that the swashbuckling captain the rum is named after is, in fact, a real person. The Welsh-born Sir Henry Morgan was more of a pirate, terrorising the Spanish in the Caribbean on behalf of the Crown in the 17th century, but that's where the connection ends. The brand didn't come into existence until the 1940s, when Seagram Company in Canada starting producing rum under the name Captain Morgan Rum Company. By 2019, Captain Morgan was the third most popular spirit consumed in the US and is sold in more than 120 countries.
These colourful candies were first made in Britain in 1974 and domestic production in the US didn't begin until 1982, but that hasn't hampered Skittles' success one bit – by 2017 Skittles were America's favourite non-chocolate candy. Originally, made in shades of green, purple, red, yellow and orange, Skittles is now available in other flavours like Sour, Tropical and Wild Berry as well as a whole host of limited edition packs. It's assumed some of Skittles' success also lies in the Taste the Rainbow tagline, which is one of the oldest advertising slogans still in use.
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A familiar sight in cupboards, on restaurant tables and as a Bloody Mary ingredient, Tabasco has been spicing up mealtimes since 1868. After Edmund McIlhenny grew a crop of Tabasco peppers on Avery Island in Louisiana, USA, he came up with a way to preserve the chillies by pulping and then ageing them in oak barrels and seasoning with salt before bottling. The first bottles were sealed with green wax, distributed to grocers along California’s coast and sold for around 75p ($1) each. Now the sauce is sold in over 195 countries and territories, though little else has changed.
Doritos tortilla chips have been around since 1964 when Frito-Lay’s marketing vice president discovered the snack at Disneyland in California. When Disneyland first opened in 1955 there was a Tex-Mex restaurant in Frontierland called Casa De Fritos owned by Frito-Lay. Though tortilla snacks weren’t previously part of Frito-Lay's repertoire, their success in the restaurant earned them a spot in the brand's snack line-up. They were rolled out nationwide in 1966 and named Doritos meaning little golden things in Spanish. They are ubiquitous today – in 2019 Doritos made £1.75 billion ($2.4 bn) in sales.
The first Pepsi was created by pharmacist Caleb Bradham in a bid to replicate the recent success of Coca-Cola. He named his new drink Brad's Drink and sold it out of his pharmacy in 1893. A few years later the drink was renamed Pepsi-Cola and by 1903 Bradham moved bottling operations out of his drugstore and into a warehouse. After a decline in sales, the brand was sold to Loft, Inc., a candy manufacturer, who tweaked the recipe and doubled the drinks sales and profits by 1938. The name was shortened to Pepsi in 1961 to distinguish it from its main rival Coca-Cola. In 2019, consumers spent a whooping £13 billion ($18bn) on Pepsi.
Today Kit Kats, the chocolate and wafer bars, are a tasty treat in their own right but when they were first introduced in the UK in 1937 it was to replace the much-loved Chocolate Crisp. It could no longer be produced in wartime due to milk shortages, so the Kit Kat was made instead. Following its success in Britain, Kit Kat was exported to various countries, including Australia and Canada, and, after Hershey's acquired a licence to produce Kit Kat in the US in 1970, it hit the shelves across the pond too.
Developed by P&G in 1967 as an alternative snack to address consumer complaints about air in the bags and broken, greasy crisps, it wasn't until 1975, when they became available across the US, that the brand really took off. In 1995 Pringles went international, which more flavours, so consumers were treated to everything from prawn cocktail and serrano ham to seaweed and even blueberry. In fact, the Europeans love Pringles so much, the average person eats around 3.5 pounds (1.6kg) of these crisps a year, while the total Pringles revenue in 2019 reached £20 billion ($28bn).
This ice cream empire started in 1978 with a course in ice cream-making from Penn State, a £9,000 ($12,000) investment and two guys, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. The first shop opened in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont. To celebrate the shop's one-year anniversary, the first Free Cone Day was held, giving out free scoops all day – a tradition that continues in Ben & Jerry's shops around the world to this day. The company enjoyed rapid growth and in April 2000 it was sold to the British food giant Unilever. The company is well-known for its political and social activism and today 194 million pints of ice cream are made every year.
A former employee of Hershey's, H. B. Reese started making Peanut Butter Cups in the basement of his home in 1928 and initially sold them as part of an assortment of candies. Hershey's continued to supply Reese with chocolate for his candy and shortly after Reese passed away, his company was merged with Hershey's. While today there are over 100 products sold under Reese's name, including spreads, cookies and cereals, Peanut Butter Cups has remained Hershey's top-selling product since 1969, with nearly 16 million Americans consuming five or more servings in 2020.
The genius invention of mayonnaise comes courtesy of Richard and Margaret Hellmann, German immigrants who developed the recipe and started using it in the salads sold in their New York deli in 1905. It proved to be so popular, the condiment was soon sold on its own in wooden boats typically used for weighing butter. While Hellmann's was thriving along the East Coast, a rival product, Best Foods Mayonnaise was popular on the West Coast. The two brands merged in 1927 and to this day Hellmann's is sold east of the Rockies while Best Foods – west. Today, it's the most popular mayonnaise in the world.
HJ Heinz Company, founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is best known for baked beans and tomato ketchup, but founder Henry Heinz started his condiment and canned-food empire by making horseradish in 1869. He harvested the root from his parents’ garden and followed his mother’s recipe, packaging the results in clear bottles – which became a trademark, signifying quality ingredients that didn’t need to hide. By 1896 Heinz sold more than 60 different products and began exporting globally from 1907. In 2020, it was estimated around 15 million people in the UK alone used Heinz ketchup.
When John and Will Kellogg launched Corn Flakes in 1895, the golden, crispy flakes were originally intended to be bland and encourage Americans to live a pure life. The brothers were devoutly religious and believed a simple diet was key to a pure lifestyle. The cereal – among the first to be commercially produced – quickly became a favourite around breakfast tables. The business started in 1906 when Will Kellogg bought out his brother, establishing the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. It was renamed Kellogg’s in 1922, when the brand began to introduce other varieties like Rice Krispies, Bran Flakes, and Frosted Flakes (now Frosties).
As cocoa was extremely scarce after the Second World War, Pietro Ferrero figured out a smart solution to the problem and developed a recipe for a sweet paste made from hazelnuts, sugar and just a little of cocoa in his bakery in Alba, Italy. The recipe was modified by Ferrero's son Michael, who renamed it Nutella in 1964 and it was an instant success. Although Nutella has often been criticised for using palm oil, the brand insists only 100% sustainable palm oil that can be traced back to the mills mainly in Malaysia is used. Today, the chocolatey spread is so popular, a jar is sold every 2.5 seconds.
Invented by pharmacist John Pemberton in 1886, Coca-Cola was originally advertised as a brain tonic to relieve headaches and exhaustion. At the time, the US was in the midst of an anti-alcohol movement and the fizzy drink was just the pick-me-up people needed. The brand didn’t get its major break until businessman Asa Griggs Candler bought it in 1888 and marketed it aggressively. Under Candler’s watch, the drink was also bottled for the first time and given its iconic packaging. Today, Coca-Cola is sold in more than 200 countries and territories across the globe.
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