Launched by Wanis in 1996 to solve problems around consistency, availability and quality in the world food supply chain, Tropical Sun has grown into the UK’s biggest world food brand, with around 700 SKUs spanning flavours from across the globe. Thirty years on, its development mirrors a fundamental shift in the way Britain shops, cooks and eats.
Much has changed since 1996; back then The Spice Girls were telling Britain what they really, really wanted, Euro ’96 had the country convinced, briefly, that football might actually be coming home, we were all obsessed with Ross and Rachel from Friends and many of us had the responsibility of keeping a Tamagotchi alive and Tropical Sun was launched.
And in a neat piece of 1990s symmetry, while the Spice Girls were busy encouraging Britain to “spice up your life”, Tropical Sun was quite literally helping shoppers do exactly that. Its spice and seasoning range has grown to encompass flavours used across cuisines around the world, reflecting the increasingly international repertoire of British home cooks.
The brand was developed in-house by Wanis in 1996, in response to the difficulties it was experiencing in sourcing products and brands consistently from overseas suppliers. Starting life in 1964 as a small greengrocer’s shop, Wanis is now one of the UK’s and Europe’s largest World Food wholesalers and distributors. As a specialist serving Britain’s growing world food market, Wanis was importing products from numerous countries and manufacturers, but did not always have sufficient control over availability, consistency or quality. For a wholesaler whose customers depended on particular ingredients and products being available when they needed them, that presented a problem. If an overseas supplier was unable to fulfil an order, products could disappear from shelves for months at a time. Changes in manufacturers could lead to differences in taste or specification. Quality could vary between shipments. And ultimately, it was Wanis’ customers who were being disappointed.
The solution was Tropical Sun, taking control of quality and supply. Creating its own brand allowed Wanis to take greater control of the supply chain, working directly with producers and specifying the quality, taste and standards it expected. It also meant the business could begin building a consistent range rather than relying solely on the availability of individual third-party brands. The idea was straightforward: to bring together flavours of the world, from sunshine countries, under one trusted brand.
From those beginnings, Tropical Sun has developed into a portfolio of around 700 SKUs, encompassing herbs and spices, seasonings, sauces, rice, pulses, drinks, snacks and cupboard staples inspired by cuisines from the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Latin America and beyond. Today, it is the UK’s biggest world food brand.
For Wanis Managing Director Sanjay Wadhwani, who has watched the brand develop over three decades, its growth reflects both the original rationale behind Tropical Sun and the transformation of Britain’s food culture. “When we launched Tropical Sun in 1996, it came from a very practical need. Our customers relied on us for products from all over the world, but when you are dependent on different suppliers in different countries, you cannot always control availability or consistency in the way you would like. We never wanted to tell a customer that something they depended on simply wasn’t available. Tropical Sun gave us the opportunity to take greater control of quality and supply and to build a range that our customers could trust. We could never have imagined quite how far it would grow. Thirty years later, to see around 700 products carrying the Tropical Sun name and to see the extraordinary way world food has become part of everyday British life is something we are immensely proud of.”
The evolution of Tropical Sun has coincided with a remarkable change in Britain’s relationship with food, these days Brits are much more adventurous thanks to international travel, eating out and a vibrant street food scene and of course social media and cross-cultural flavours are now the norm. Ingredients that once required a visit to a specialist store can now be picked up at the corner shop as well as the supermarket.
Thirty years of flavour
A range of around 700 SKUs would have been difficult to envisage when Tropical Sun first appeared in 1996, the portfolio now stretches across multiple cuisines and categories, united by the principle on which the brand was founded: providing consumers with dependable access to authentic flavours and quality products from around the world.
Tropical Sun’s journey from a solution to a wholesaler’s supply-chain problem to a 700-SKU £70 million world food brand has happened alongside that change. As it celebrates its 30th anniversary, the brand can make a credible claim to not just witnessing Britain’s growing appetite for global food but also to supplying it. Thirty years on, Tropical Sun is still doing what it set out to do in 1996: bringing the flavours of the world to Britain.
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