Joseph left school at fourteen with just five year’s education and started working for his father – although he would spend time away in London as an apprentice.
Subsequently, Joseph took over the running of the company with his brother John Stephenson Rowntree.
From 1859 he ran the family shop buy ten years later in 1869, he joined another brother, Henry Isaac Rowntree.
Henry owned a chocolate factory in York and when Henry died in 1883, Joseph became owner of the company.
Joseph employed his own progressive ideas in setting up and then running a new factory that opened in 1881.
He was known as an enlightened business man who did much to improve workplace conditions.
Rowntree’s company expanded from thirty to in excess of 4000 employees by the end of the nineteenth century.
Although the business was always well-managed, the real brand building would begin in the 1930s, after the Rowntree family ceased to have managerial control.
A merger with John Mackintosh & Co. in 1969 was followed by take-over by Nestlé in 1988.
Joseph Rowntree (24 May 1836 – 24 February 1925)
