According to the Kraft Heinz website, “Australia’s much-loved sauce was born in 1906 when W. C. Douglass company, a Sydney-based grocer wholesaler, started making Fountain tomato sauce in its Goodlet Street factories in Surry Hills, NSW.” They should know. Or so I thought. However, the more I looked into the history of the brand, the less certain I became about this.

Yes, it was the W. C. Douglass company that introduced the brand. The company itself was founded in the late 1890s as a general merchant and manufacturer’s agent. With premises in Liverpool Street, it was advertised as:

“…holding large stocks of everything appertaining to the Grocery Trade. Special Wholesale Agents for “A.B.C.” Tea, “Breakfast D-Light,” “Bovril,” Bird’s Custard Powders, Daum’s Extract of Coffee, Courtenay’s Sauce.

In 1904, the company had a prominent exhibit at the Sydney Show.  However, the brands exhibited were A.B.C. Tea and “Planet” goods. The Planet brand evidently included essences, custard powers, jelly crystals, curry powder, Breakfast D-Light (a new porridge), self-raising flour and baking powder. There was no mention of Fountain and no mention of sauces. In fact, sauce wasn’t mentioned in any W. C. Douglass advertising until 1932, and then it was of the Worcestershire variety. It seems Kraft Heinz even has the location wrong. W. C. Douglass didn’t buy the Goodlet Street factory until 1929.

The earliest Fountain advertising was for self-raising flour. Along with other dry goods such as baking powder and the aforementioned Breakfast D-Light, it was promoted with a series of coupon-style campaigns. Customers were prompted to collect the coupons from the packets and send them in to claim prizes. The address for these promotions was Fountain Mills, Forveaux St., Sydney.

Tomato Sauce first sneaked into an advertisement promoting a Yo-Yo giveaway in 1936. With three coupons from Breakfast D-Light, the lucky customer could score a Duncan’s Beginners Yo-Yo, but by adding three coupons from tomato sauce, the prize became an impressive Tournament Yo-Yo.

When W. C. Douglass began advertising Fountain Home-Made Style Tomato Sauce in the late 1930s, they claimed the tomatoes were “picked and packed the same day” and that the “kitchens” where the sauce was processed were “built amid the fields”. The fields in Surry Hills? Perhaps Mudgee, as Kraft Heinz asserts. Or even Shepparton in Victoria, where W. C. Douglass certainly had a factory by the 1950s.

Through the 1940s and early ’50s, self-raising flour, custard powder and baking powder continued to bear the Fountain brand, joined in the 1950s by chutney and canned goods, including tomato soup, spaghetti and baked beans. It seems things changed when W. C. Douglass was acquired by Cerebos (Australia) Ltd, the local arm of a British company, in 1964.  The focus became sauces, with the variety range launched by 1965.

Ownership of the brand continued to change. Cerebos was bought by Rank Hovis McDougall of the UK in 1968, before being sold to Suntory of Japan in 1990. Suntory Beverage & Food Ltd sold the Cerebos food and instant coffee business in Australia and New Zealand to Kraft Heinz for $290 million, a deal completed in the first quarter of 2018.

Fountain sauces, now part of the Kraft Heinz portfolio, include Hoi Sin, Hot Chilli, Mint, Satay, Soy, Soy & Honey, Spicy Red, Steak, Sweet Chilli, Thick Mint, Mild Mexican Chilli, Plum, Sweet & Sour, and Mustard, as well as the range of tomato and BBQ sauces. The tomato sauce range includes the traditional “footy sauce”,  White Crow,  which was acquired by Cerebos during the Suntory years.

Although Fountain tomato sauce is popular, it’s not the leading brand, being outsold by MasterFoods and Heinz. And that heritage, tracing its origin back to Goodlet Street in 1906? A good story, repeated on multiple websites. But perhaps it’s taking a little creative licence?