Cannings Foods Limited was a Trinidad and Tobago company founded in 1912 by Ernest Canning, a British-born businessman.
The enterprise began as a grocery store. Later, it introduced dairy products, baked goods, poultry processing, and soft drinks.
Cannings acquired the Coca-Cola franchise for Trinidad in 1939. The supermarket HiLo, started in 1950, was the first self-service store in Trinidad and Tobago. Cannings was taken over by Neal and Massy in 1975.Daniel Miller, "Coca-Cola: A black sweet drink from Trinidad", in Daniel Miller, ed., Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter (Routledge, 2002), , pp. 173–175. Excerpts available at Google Books.
In the 1990s, the Cannings Group ceased to operate, with the exception of the HiLo supermarket. The Cannings soft drink brand was sold to Coca-Cola, and continues to be produced.
Cannings, and its relationship with Coca-Cola, are treated in fictionalized (and renamed) fashion in V. S. Naipaul's 1967 novel The Mimic Men.
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