The Story Here Is Really the Shop Behind the Packet
There is no clear, product-level origin story supplied for this particular M&S custard cream, so it would be cheeky to pretend that Michael Marks personally pondered sandwich biscuits at Kirkgate Market. What we can say is that the packet sits inside a much longer M&S food story. Michael Marks established his first penny bazaar stall at Kirkgate Market in Leeds in 1884, funded by a £5 loan from Leeds warehouse owner Isaac Jowitt Dewhirst. At that original market stall, Marks used the wonderfully plain slogan “Don’t Ask the Price, it’s a Penny”. Thomas Spencer, born in Skipton, Yorkshire, in 1851, had worked as a bookkeeper for Dewhirst’s wholesale company in Leeds before joining Marks. That is a pleasingly northern beginning for a business that later became shorthand for a very particular sort of British reliability.
From Penny Bazaar to Food Hall Habits
M&S did not begin as a biscuit empire. It began in the bustle of Victorian market trading, with simple pricing, practical goods and an instinct for what ordinary shoppers would actually buy. Marks and Spencer became partners in 1894, with Spencer handling office and warehouse matters while Marks ran the market stalls. The business became a limited company in 1903, and over time it moved from market trading into the high street world that many British shoppers grew up knowing. Food came into the business from 1931, which matters here because the modern M&S biscuit packet is part of that wider food hall culture rather than a stand-alone biscuit-maker’s tale.
The St Michael Shadow
For many people, especially anyone who grew up before the 2000s, M&S food still carries a ghostly little St Michael label in the back of the mind. The St Michael own-label name was introduced in 1927 and registered in 1928, named after Michael Marks by his son Simon Marks. By 1950, almost everything sold by Marks & Spencer used the St Michael name, and that remained true for roughly half a century. The St Michael brand was dropped in 2000 as part of a wider rebranding, with food halls renamed M&S Foodhall. So if these custard creams feel both modern and oddly old-fashioned, that is not your imagination. The packet says M&S, but the memory cupboard may still be muttering St Michael.
Why Custard Creams Travel Well Emotionally
Custard creams are not glamorous, which is precisely their strength. They are dependable biscuits for dependable moments: tea after school, a plate put out for visitors, a packet opened during a family argument that somehow cools down once the kettle is on. In Canada, British expats often miss the specific ordinary things more than the grand ones. Not banquets. Not ceremonies. Just the biscuit that used to be there without anyone making a fuss. An M&S custard cream can do a remarkable amount of emotional admin for something so small and beige.
A Small Square of British Common Sense
There is something very M&S about putting a familiar biscuit in a neat packet and letting it get on with the job. No need to inflate the story beyond what is known: this is not a documented origin tale for the custard cream itself, but it is part of a long British own-label food tradition that began with a market stall and became a national habit. For anyone in Canada trying to rebuild a proper tea cupboard, M&S Custard Creams make perfect sense. The Great British Shop is happy to leave them there quietly, where they belong, until someone says they are only having one.
