Kennedy's Bread

From the collection of

Launched in 2000, Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive spans from 1897 to the present day and currently contains an ever-expanding catalogue of 13,000 items. It comprises material from a variety of depositors including feature films, sport, documentaries, animation, amateur footage, light entertainment, and a significant proportion of broadcast material from the UTV Archive.

Kennedy's Bread

Northern Ireland Screen's Digital Film Archive
Belfast
1960-01-01
Sound

This family favourite is guaranteed to have you singing all the way to the bread bin

Kennedy's bakery builds its brand with this catchy television advert. Like the bread this earworm of a jingle is a fond favorite for many who grew up in Belfast. But bread wasn't the only thing baked in the Beechmount Avenue ovens. On Christmas Eve mingled with the aroma of baking bread, you could savour the smell of Christmas dinner, as J. B. Kennedy would use his industrial ovens to cook turkeys for local residents.

This advert comes from the collection of National Museums Northern Ireland. Explore the Britain on Film map to find out more about this changing family business through the lens of keen amateur filmmaker Hugh Kennedy and the footage he created of his father J. B. Kennedy's Bakery.

Near Your Local Cinema

Local goods for local people! Screen advertising wasn’t all national brands and chain stores.

Purpose-built cinemas began appearing around Britain shortly before WWI, booming in popularity during the War and developing into the ‘picture palaces’ of the 1920s - when adverts jostled for space alongside newsreels before the main feature. Local businesses were quick to see the potential of a big screen and a captive audience to promote their wares.

While they didn’t have access to the budgets of the national brands, regionally-specific businesses had the benefit of that personal touch. Products and services evolved over time, but that scratchy ad for your local Indian restaurant, so integral to the cinema-going experience into the 1990s, had its roots in the booming entrepreneurship of the industry many decades before.