From a Penny Stall in Leeds
The story behind the name on the packet begins well before oat biscuits had to compete with cereal bars pretending to be lunch. Michael Marks established his first penny bazaar stall at Kirkgate Market in Leeds in 1884, helped by a £5 loan from Leeds warehouse owner Isaac Jowitt Dewhirst. At that stall, Marks used the wonderfully plain-speaking slogan “Don’t Ask the Price, it’s a Penny”, which is about as Yorkshire-adjacent in spirit as retail gets, even if Marks himself had arrived in Leeds as a Polish-Jewish immigrant. Thomas Spencer, born in Skipton in 1851, had worked as a bookkeeper for Dewhirst’s wholesale company before joining Marks as a business partner in 1894. One man knew stalls and customers, the other knew offices and stock. Between them, they built something rather larger than a market table.
Why M&S Food Feels Different
M&S did not begin as a food business. Its early life was rooted in market trading, clothing, household goods and the discipline of selling useful things clearly. Food came later, from 1931, but the habits of the business mattered. Marks & Spencer became known for own-label goods and direct relationships with suppliers, which helped shape the particular character of its food halls. For many British shoppers, M&S food has never felt quite like ordinary supermarket shopping. It has that slightly ceremonial quality: nipping in for one thing, coming out with biscuits, soup, something for tea and a receipt that suggests the biscuit decision was not the only decision made.
The St Michael Memory
For a long stretch of the twentieth century, many M&S goods carried the St Michael name. The brand was introduced in 1927 and registered as a trademark in 1928, named after Michael Marks by his son Simon Marks. By around 1950, almost everything sold by Marks & Spencer used the St Michael brand, and that remained familiar to generations of British shoppers. The name was dropped in 2000 during a wider rebranding, with food halls becoming M&S Foodhall. That is why older shoppers may still talk about St Michael labels with surprising tenderness, while the modern packet simply says M&S. Same high-street memory, tidier modern clothes.
The Biscuit Tin Argument
Oat biscuits have always had a useful role in the British biscuit tin. They are not as showy as a chocolate-covered biscuit, not as severe as a plain digestive, and not as reckless as anything involving jam and icing. They occupy the middle ground: sturdy, crisp, gently sweet, and very easy to justify. M&S Oat Crunch Biscuits fit that tradition neatly. They are the sort of biscuit you can offer to visitors without making a performance of it, yet still quietly hope they do not take too many. This is the everyday genius of British biscuits: they appear modest, then somehow become emotionally important.
A Packet That Travels Well in Memory
For British expats in Canada, M&S biscuits are not just about oats, crunch or the practical matter of filling a cupboard. They are about the food hall on a Saturday, a carrier bag rustling on the bus, a parent arriving with “just a few bits”, or a parcel from home padded out with things that make no sense until you have been away long enough. M&S Oat Crunch Biscuits carry that familiar calm: kettle on, packet open, no fuss required. And if the 300g pack disappears faster than planned, nobody at The Great British Shop is likely to look shocked.
