Anthony R. "Tony" Matthews OBE
To show the world that British food “isn’t just boring,” Tony Matthews, president of Food From Britain, spent his career focusing on promotion and increased the presence of imported British foods throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico by creating partnerships between British manufacturers and North American retailers.
Foray into Food. Matthews spent his early career serving as a combat engineer officer in the 1944 to 1957 wars in India, Myanmar (then Burma), Malaysia, and Indonesia; he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as a Member of the Order of the British Empire.
His first experience with food distribution came in 1971, when he became director of logistics and food at Sarma Penney, a Belgian supermarket chain with 70 locations and 150 franchise stores that was purchased by J.C. Penney. (At that time, J.C. Penney was No. 3 in the large store/supermarket store category operating throughout the U.S., Matthews says.)
Matthews’ weekend travels in and around Europe with his wife, Patricia, were spent cultivating relationships with shop owners and getting a “taste appreciation for local fare,” he says.
“Our travels solidified our interest in food,” Matthews recalls. “The U.K. did not exactly rejoice in great food before the war. People also did not have a lot of cash to spend on food—this certainly affected their interest in it.”
Breaking Boundaries. In 1981, the couple moved to the U.S. to work for a competitor and, following that, made the switch to the marketing organization Food From Britain in 1984. Setting up office in Atlanta, Matthews signed on as president, Patricia as vice president.
“We provided British manufacturers with advice on how to enter the market, gave them introductions to importers and retailers, as well as encouraged and made arrangements for their participation in trade shows such as the Fancy Food Show,” Matthews explains of his business.
Tony retired in 2000, as did Patricia, but, with the agreement of Food From Britain, proceeded to run their own consultancy company based in Brussels; the governments of Israel and Singapore were among their clients. They retired again in 2007, returning to Atlanta. Both remain interested and active in developments in the food industry.
Accomplishments. Under the Matthewses’ leadership at Food From Britain, imports of British groceries and beer into the U.S. increased substantially; a final quarterly report, dated August 1998, showed in that ten-year period, U.K. exports of food to the U.S. doubled, while beverage exports to the U.S. increased by 35 percent. Beer imports to the U.S. also doubled their market share in the last seven-year period, accounting for 5 percent of all imported beer.
By providing British manufacturers with business guidance as well as introductions to importers and retailers, and encouraging and arranging for their participation in trade shows, Matthews helped suppliers build awareness through extensive retail promotional programs staged in some 1,500 retail outlets each year. Food From Britain even published a quarterly activity report giving individual vendors the tools for interpreting figures collected by A. C. Nielsen and I.R.I. field audits to determine product positioning—a forward-thinking strategy that fostered market share.
Food From Britain continues to build a U.K. food presence in the U.S., particularly with specialty cheeses—something Matthews initially thought would be a disaster. “I was astounded to see cheese so successful and well-received, because early on we thought that Americans only thought of cheese as something you put in a burger,” he says. “Certainly an unfair comment now!”
