Mackintosh's

The firm was founded by John Mackintosh (1868–1920) and his wife, Violet (née Taylor), who bought a pastry shop in Halifax with their joint savings of £100 in 1890, the year that they married. Violet, who had been a confectioner's assistant before her marriage, ran the shop and her husband continued to work at a cotton mill. To attract customers, they decided to sell a special toffee. Violet developed a recipe which blended the traditional, brittle English butterscotch with soft, American caramel, and they sold the toffee as Mackintosh's Celebrated Toffee. The toffee's success enabled Mackintosh to expand the business beyond Halifax by 1894. Indeed, it was so successful that it "ultimately transformed popular understanding of the term 'toffee', previously a description of any sugar or boiled sweet".

Moving from retail to manufacture and wholesale, they first rented a small warehouse in Bond Street, Halifax, and in 1895, they commenced larger-scale production at bigger premises at Hope Street. The firm was converted into a limited liability company, John Mackintosh Ltd, in 1899 raising £11,000 and borrowing a further £4,000 to build a new works at Queen's Road. When the building was destroyed by fire in 1909, the insurance payout was used to purchase the vacant Albion Mills and the Queen's Road factory was rebuilt and 1912 expanded to begin chocolate manufacture.

In 1904, Mackintosh established his first overseas factory at Asbury Park, New Jersey which, however, soon failed. Undeterred, a factory was opened in 1906 at Krefeld, near Düsseldorf. By 1914, operations had been established in Australia and Canada and John Mackintosh Ltd employed some 1000 people.

The German factory was confiscated and the number of employees fell to 250 during the First World War. In 1917 a new line was developed, a chocolate covered Toffee-De-Luxe, but all chocolate production ceased that year when a wartime conscription tribunal refused an exemption for a key manager.

Albert Jarman Caley had begun selling a range of mineral waters and soft drinks in Norwich in 1863. He diversified to produce cocoa (1883), chocolate (1886) and Christmas crackers (1898). The business was purchased in 1918 by the African and Eastern Trading Company and underwent expansion at Norwich and mineral water and cider factories in London, Ipswich, and Banham. Caley's had become overcapitalised and unprofitable, and the new owner sought unsuccessfully to dispose of the business in the 1920s.

In 1920, Lever Brothers acquired the Niger Company and in 1929, the United Africa Company was formed by a merger of the Niger Company and the African and Eastern Trading Company. In the same year, Unilever was formed when Lever Brothers merged with Dutch Margarine Unie.

As a result of a lunchtime meeting at the Savoy Hotel, Harold bought the A.J. Caley chocolate company in Norwich from Unilever in 1932, giving it access to chocolate production.

Whilst continuing in their roles at the parent company, Eric Mackintosh (Harold's younger brother, the managing director of Mackintosh's from 1929) became chairman of Caley's, with Harry Guy taking control of finance and Frank Bottomley as works manager.