Joseph Lyons (caterer)

He was the chairman and co-founder of J. Lyons and Co., a restaurant chain, food manufacturing and hotel conglomerate created in 1884 that dominated British mass-catering in the first half of the twentieth century.

He had an ingenious mechanical bent and invented small gadgets that he was able to sell quickly at the many exhibitions held throughout Great Britain in the late nineteenth century, using his skills in showmanship and sales.

[1] A trial tea pavilion was run at the Newcastle Jubilee Exhibition of 1887[3] which was so successful that in that year a private company was incorporated to develop the business.

The company took space at the 1888 International Exhibition of Science, Art and Industry in Glasgow[4] and the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris, after which it took over catering at Olympia (1891), the Crystal Palace, and the White City, all in London.

[1] He was an accomplished watercolourist[10] who showed his paintings at the Royal Institution where they were bought by Sir Spencer Wells, surgeon to Queen Victoria, and Admiral Earldey-Wilmot, commander of the Channel Fleet.

[1] He was survived by his wife and is remembered in a blue plaque at 11a Palace Mansions, Hammersmith Road, West Kensington, London, inscribed "Sir Joseph Lyons 1847–1917 Pioneer of mass catering lived here".