In 2009, Tom Lock was working weekends behind the fresh meat counter at his local Waitrose. Whenever he walked past the snack aisle, he saw the same thing: British pub classics, pork scratchings and dry roasted nuts, abandoned to cheap industrial fats, plastic foil packaging and ingredient lists that read like a chemistry test.
He thought the country’s most beloved snacks deserved better. So he started over from scratch in his mum’s kitchen, with no corporate backing, and gave the pork scratching an unapologetically premium makeover.
Three years later he walked back into that same Waitrose buying office and pitched the brand. Awfully Posh has been stocked there ever since, alongside a long list of upscale British pubs and hotels.
“Use your monocle when eating, just in case any bones have managed to evade us.”
The back of the very first pack, 2010
Made in Denmark, made properly
All our pork snacks are produced in Denmark, where the freshest, best-quality pork rind in Europe is processed. Working at source means we can cook from fresh rind every time, not the frozen imports almost every other UK brand relies on. The difference is significant: better crackle, cleaner flavour, no off notes.
Each pack starts with prime rind, the best part, sliced uniformly, batch-rendered in natural pork fat (never industrial seed oils), then finished with sea salt. The ingredient list reads exactly the same as your grandmother’s would: pork and salt. Nothing else needed, nothing else added.
The world’s first paper nut pack
When we applied the same thinking to nuts, we hit a problem: every nut packet on the shelf was wrapped in plastic foil or aluminium laminate. None of it was home-recyclable.
So we engineered something new: a paper bag lined with a microscopically thin layer of Hydropol, a water-soluble polymer resin. Crisp nuts on the inside, fully home-recyclable on the outside. The first of its kind in the world; reported in The Grocer when it launched.
Inside the paper, we kept things simple too: whole nuts, baked rather than deep-fried so the natural oils stay where they belong, dusted with real seasoning.
Popcorn, taken seriously
We took the same approach to popcorn: away from the sticky, lurid stuff in cinema foyers, towards a snack a grown-up might actually want next to a cold drink. Himalayan pink salt instead of refined table salt. Demerara sugar where sweetness is called for. Four flavours, plus a mixed case for those who can’t decide.
