A frozen-food-led UK supermarket chain, founded in Oswestry in 1970, with its head office in Deeside, Wales.
Iceland Foods is a British supermarket chain that started as a frozen food specialist and now sells a full grocery range, with its own brands and exclusive products. Its Food Warehouse stores, launched in 2014, are larger bulk-buy shops usually on retail parks, and by 2025 had become a separate chain within the group. Its own site says the company has almost 1,000 company-owned stores in the UK and exports its own-label products to more than 40 countries.
The first store opened on 18 November 1970 on Leg Street in Oswestry, England, run by Malcolm Walker and Peter Hinchcliffe. Walker went on to chair the company. Its owners page says that in June 2020 Malcolm Walker and Tarsem Dhaliwal returned the company to full British family ownership. Tarsem Dhaliwal has been Group Chief Executive since 2018 and has been with Iceland since 1985, and Richard Walker has been Executive Chairman since January 2023.
The company describes its approach as 'Doing It Right' for its employees, customers and the environment, and Tarsem Dhaliwal's stated philosophy is to be "long term greedy", favouring long-term decisions over quick short-term ones. We did not find a formal mission statement. The Iceland Foods Charitable Foundation says it has given more than 30 million pounds to good causes since 1973, with priorities in dementia, environment, wellbeing and children.
The head office is in Deeside, in Flintshire, Wales, and the stores are across the UK. The company says it directly employs more than 30,000 people, and says its front-line retail staff are among the best paid on the high street. It says The Sunday Times named it Best Big Company to Work For in the UK in 2012 and 2014, which is dated evidence. Wikipedia lists 28,853 employees in 2022. The group also has franchised stores in the Channel Islands, Spain, Portugal and Norway.
The company has made headline commitments on its products. In 2018 it ended palm oil use in its own-brand food, the first major UK supermarket to do so, and it says it removed artificial colours and flavours in the 1980s. It has pledged net zero carbon in its operations by 2040. The roles it needs include store teams, delivery drivers, food buying and development, and head office work in Deeside, though the pages we read did not list roles, so check the Iceland jobs site.
Website: about.iceland.co.uk
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