'There were 900 people in the queue and I waited three hours, but it was worth it': The Christmas cracker-maker who supplies Britain's most exclusive shops
Hannah Bidmead of Nancy & Betty is the luxury Christmas cracker maker who makes the list of our heroes of Christmas.
This Christmas, Country Life is raising a glass to the unsung heroes who work all year round to make our seasonal celebrations special. All their stories will be collected together on our Christmas section.
Today, it's Hannah Bidmead of Nancy & Betty Christmas crackers.
When Hannah Bidmead started designing Christmas cards and wrapping paper, she named the fledgling enterprise Nancy and Betty, after her grandmother Nancy and Nancy’s twin sister Betty who, as small children, had been models for Pears soap. ‘I’d always wanted my own business,’ she says. ‘My great-grandmothers had been a milliner and dressmaker respectively; there were butchers and bakers in the family. Shopkeeping was in my blood, you could say.’
The crackers are a far cry from what you'd get in the supermarket.
One day, after her designs had been picked up by several stockists, she left her young baby at home with her mother and joined the queue for Liberty’s Open Day Call in London. ‘You sat down with buyers to show your wares — it was like speed dating,’ she explains.
‘There were 900 people in the queue and I waited three hours, but it was worth it.’ The store has stocked her work ever since, including crackers boxed in signature Liberty purple.
Work on the crackers starts in January and continues all year.
These days, her bespoke crackers are sold in most high-end stores — one of the gifts secreted in the Harvey Nichols ones is a bottle stopper engraved with the HN logo — and thousands of boxes are sent out to online customers.
Eight staff (elves) make the crackers, starting in January. ‘We use sustainable paper stock, fully recyclable,’ Hannah assures me, ‘and plant a tree for every box sold.’ Inside are elegant little presents — a wooden salt scoop, a cocktail jigger, a honey drizzler — and there are ‘fill your own’ versions. The King crackers are huge and opulent in a wooden box, priced at £159.
‘They are well over the top,’ she admits, ‘but they sell out every year.’
For those who like to go to town when dressing the Christmas table, Hannah offers one-stop shopping. You can play matchy-matchy with the whole spread, from napkins to crackers to place mats and cards or — controversial — mix your pheasants with your geese and robins.
Hannah Bidmead's Christmas treat ‘I like Christmas Eve best. In the morning, the children and I make ginger biscuits listening to Classic FM. At 3pm, the whole village walks to church for the service and then everyone goes to the pub.’
