Our History

Humble beginnings

Our history started in 1808 when fenland farmer Thomas Ridley bought his first grocery shop on Abbeygate Street in Bury St Edmunds, in the heart of a thriving Suffolk market town. We’re proud to still be family-run and based near Bury St Edmunds today, six generations and more than 200 years later!

In the early days we were a small company delivering groceries by horse and cart. Today, we’ve grown to become one of the UK’s leading independent food and drink wholesalers, supplying a wide range of catering and hospitality customers all over the East of England. Across our sites in Suffolk and Kent, we employ almost 300 people and care about providing a personal and flexible service, centred on quality, convenience and value.

View our history timeline

Proud of our history and heritage, you can view a more detailed account of our 200+ year history here.

Transitioning to foodservice

As a business with a very long history, Thomas Ridley has seen significant changes in the industry over the years and has always been able to adapt and grow, keeping our customers’ needs front of mind.

We first started to supply foodservice establishments in 1968, moving to our wholesale distribution site in Rougham, just three miles outside Bury St Edmunds, in 1972. Since then, the main site has undergone significant growth and expansion to keep up with demand, such as building a large frozen food warehouse, powered by solar panels. In recent years we’ve also opened a second satellite depot in Kent, to strengthen our supply network in the south east and greater London area.

The original Ridley’s Fine Food store in Bury St Edmunds closed in 1996, following the rise in local supermarket chains such as Waitrose and change in buying habits.

Moving with the times, we opened up part of our Suffolk warehouse as a Cash and Carry instead, allowing local customers to come direct to us to buy in bulk. In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we adjusted this format to offer a safe and modern click and collect service instead, which remains popular today for anyone to use without needing to hold a trade account. During the pandemic our workforce and supply chain remained strong and we were proud to continue to supply a wide range of key worker organisations across the health and education sectors.

Caring for the future

Under the vision of our Group Managing Director, Justin Godfrey, great-great-great-great-great grandson of our founder, Thomas Ridley, we want to do more than just deliver great products and a great service for our customers and look at what else we can do to help our environment and local community.

Starting with our own carbon footprint, we installed 400 solar panels on the roof of our main warehouse, saving 21 tonnes of CO2 and make sure as much of our waste as possible (99%) is diverted from landfill.

It’s important to us that we can operate in a sustainable way that helps to protect tomorrow, but we also didn’t want to stop with our own carbon footprint. Being part of a large supply chain, we know there is more we can do to positively impact the planet. That’s why we decided to expand our service to help our customers, too, by introducing cooking oil, plastic and cardboard recycling schemes.

So far, we’ve helped to convert more than 300,000 litres of cooking oil into biodiesel and sent 24 tonnes of plastic and 150 tonnes of cardboard to be recycled, with our customers’ cardboard baled at our head office site in Suffolk. Find out more about how these initiatives could help your business.

Caring for the community

Under the vision of our Group Managing Director, Justin Godfrey, great-great-great grandson of our founder, Thomas Ridley, we want to do more than just deliver great products and a great service for our customers and look at what else we can do to help our environment and local community.