Labour Research Department
06 December 2010
Workplace canteens - a survey of union reps
Personnel Today
Working lunch: eating healthily in the workplace
15 October 2007
The Independent
With a canteen like this, who needs Conran?
Wednesday, 14 January 1998
London transport 702B JXC2 Bedford /Scammell staff canteen
See Wikipedia “cafeteria”
1933 : Simon Marks commissioned Flora Solomon to set up a staff welfare service that provided pensions, subsidised staff canteens, health and dental service, hairdressing, rest rooms and camping holidays (Marks & Spencer website)
“At a dinner party in 1932, Flora Solomon berated Simon Marks over poor employee welfare standards. He responded by giving her the task of creating the Staff Welfare department.
In 1934 she also set up the Training Department to help employees learn new skills and develop team spirit; "A store is not a collection of private individuals, but a team of people working for a common object…The well-being of an individual cannot exist in a vacuum".
She received an OBE for her part in evacuating Jewish children from Europe and organising food distribution during World War II. Her son, Peter Benenson went on to found Amnesty International.”
[12] .. BRITISH RESTAURANTS
The story of British Restaurants is an interesting one. They were introduced as Communal Feeding Centres and much of the early work was done by Mrs Flora Solomon - Marks and Spencer's 'Lady of the Ladle.' She was in charge of Marks and Spencer's staff canteens at the beginning of the war, and Simon Marks gave her permission to extend her activities to include the public.
A start was made in Kensington, and, practically commandeering empty premises and borrowing Marks and Spencer's personnel she set it up. When established she persuaded the local populace to run it, others followed.
In November 1940 Coventry was heavily bombed, Flora went up there and found a dead city, she set up a mobile canteen using staff from the wrecked Marks and Spencer's branch and got to work. It must be said that another one belonged to the intrepid ladies of the Women's Voluntary Service. A number of Marks and Spencer's stores in provincial cities went up in smoke in the next few weeks, and others were badly damaged, so whenever the shopgirls were left without a store, they were put to work in a communal feeding centre.
Mrs Solomons, who knew the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, put the idea to him, thus began the Communal Feeding Centre - Mr Churchill, the Prime Minister objected to that particular name, saying that it was suggestive of Communism and the workhouse, he suggested British Restaurants instead, adding that "everybody associates the word restaurant with a good meal, and they might as well have the name, if they cannot get anything else". British Restaurants remained with us throughout the war, and for a few years afterwards.