Butterkist Sweet & Salted Popcorn - 70g

From Kentucky to the cinema queue

It started in 1914, when Fred Hoke and James Holcomb began selling popcorn machines in Kentucky, USA, under the Butter-Kist name, with help from inventor Dan Talbert. The machines arrived in the UK in 1938, and the brand grew the way you would hope, through sales to cinema audiences. After the Second World War, Craven Keiller built a factory in York to supply Butterkist popcorn directly to UK cinema chains. Popcorn, in other words, that grew up in the dark, watching films.

A few owners, then Pontefract

In 1998 Craven Keiller sold Butterkist to Cadbury Trebor Bassett, which in 2000 merged it into its Monkhill Confectionery subsidiary and moved production to Pontefract, West Yorkshire. In 2017 KP Snacks acquired the Butterkist popcorn business from Tangerine Confectionery, including its Pontefract manufacturing site and 140 staff. KP Snacks is a subsidiary of the Intersnack Group. A lot of names on the paperwork, then. Butterkist is still produced in Pontefract, which has held on to it through every change of letterhead.

Top of the pile

Butterkist grew into the UK's leading popcorn brand, and as of 2025 it is Britain's best-selling brand of popcorn. It marked its 100th anniversary in 2014. None of which matters much when you are on the sofa with the film paused, telling yourself you are only having a few. It is the bag from the corner shop, the bag on the coach trip, the bag that somehow empties itself during the adverts. You will finish it. Everyone does.