William Fortnum was a
footman in the
household of
Queen Anne. The royal family's insistence on having new candles every night resulted in large amounts of half-used wax, which Fortnum promptly resold. Fortnum also had a side business as a grocer. He convinced his landlord, Hugh Mason, to be his associate, and they founded the first Fortnum & Mason store in Mason's small shop at St James's Market in 1707. In 1761, William Fortnum's grandson Charles went into the service of
Queen Charlotte, and the connection with the royal court led to an increase in business. Fortnum & Mason claims to have invented the
Scotch egg, in 1738. The store began to stock speciality items, namely ready-to-eat luxury meals such as poultry or
game served in
aspic jelly. During the
Napoleonic Wars, the emporium supplied
dried fruit, spices and other
preserves to British
officers. In the
Victorian era, it was frequently called upon to provide food for prestigious court functions.
Queen Victoria sent shipments of Fortnum & Mason's concentrated
beef tea to
Florence Nightingale's hospitals during the
Crimean War.
Charles Drury Edward Fortnum (1820–1899), of the family, was a distinguished art collector and a Trustee of the
British Museum, to which he donated his collection of Islamic
ceramics. In 1886, after having bought the entire stock of five cases of a new product made by
H. J. Heinz, Fortnum & Mason became the first store in Britain to stock tins of
baked beans. In April 1951, the Canadian businessman
W. Garfield Weston acquired the store and became its chairman following a
boardroom coup. In 1964, he commissioned a four-ton clock to be installed above the main entrance of the store as a tribute to its founders. Every hour, models of William Fortnum and Hugh Mason emerge and bow to each other, with chimes and
18th-century style music playing in the background. The chimes were incorporated into
Jonathan Dove's orchestral adaptation of
Zeb Soanes' children's book ''Gaspard's Foxtrot'', which depicts the clock and its figures as illustrated by
James Mayhew. Since Garfield Weston's death in 1978, the store has been run by two of his granddaughters,
Jana Khayat and
Kate Hobhouse. The Chief Executive Officer is Tom Athron, who joined the business in December 2020. The store underwent a £24 million refurbishment in 2007 as part of its tercentenary celebrations. , ‘King and Queen’, 1990, Bronze. Sited above the entrance to Fortnum and Mason, Piccadilly, London. In March 2012, Queen
Elizabeth II,
Camilla (then Duchess of Cornwall) and
Catherine (then Duchess of Cambridge) made their first official joint visit to Fortnum & Mason. During this visit, they were each presented with their own personalised hampers. The Queen opened the
Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon on the fourth floor. In November 2013, the company's first additional store was opened at
St Pancras International station. The retailer has since opened stores and restaurants at
Heathrow Terminal 5 (in 2014) and at
The Royal Exchange (in 2018). Fortnum & Mason opened its first standalone store outside Britain in
Dubai on 21 March 2014. On 4 April 2019, it was announced that Fortnum & Mason would open a
Hong Kong store at
K11 Musea in September 2019. The 7,000 square-foot space features a retail store and restaurant. == Organisation ==