Product Code Database
A tuck shop is a small retailer located either within or close to the grounds of a school, hospital, apartment complex, or other similar facility. In traditional British usage, tuck shops are associated chiefly with the sale of confectionery, sweets, or Snack and are common at private ('fee-paying') schools. Tuck shops located within a campus are often the only place where monetary transactions may be made by students. As such, they may also sell items of stationery or other related school items. In some regions, the words 'tuck shop' may be interchangeable with a 'canteen'. The term is used in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Jamaica, Hong Kong, Botswana, The Bahamas, and in other parts of the former British Empire.
In Australia, at youth clubs, campsites, and schools, the tuck shop is mainly staffed by volunteers from the community, which may include students, parents and, in the case of clubs, its members. The term is also used in Indian boarding schools, notably in Bangalore Military School. In Canada, often have tuck shops for the same reason, to allow campers to buy small items while away from home. Some hospitals in Canada also have tuck shops, though it is more common for them to be called gift shops. Tuck shops in a long-term care facility typically sell personal hygiene items such as razors, soap, and shampoo.
"Tucker" may originate with the lacework at the top of 19th Century women's dresses, but the origin of its use in regard to food probably arises from the popular shops run in England by various members of the Tuck family between 1780 and 1850. The earliest reference found is to Thomas Tuck whose "Tuck's Coffee House" in Norwich was popular among the city's literary circles in the late 18th Century. There was a library for the use of customers, and it was located on Gentleman's Walk in the heart of the city. It is mentioned as a place of legal negotiation in public notices published in the Norfolk Chronicle on 9 February 1782 and 12 and 19 April 1783. In 1820, William Joseph Tuck was a confectioner at Duncan Place, Hackney, outside London. Hackney and nearby London Fields were fashionable for picnic outings and holidays at the time. The London Directory of 1846 records his son Thomas James Tuck as a baker at "The Bun House" in Duncan Place. Edward Walford in his Old and New London: Volume 5 of 1879 says: "In the short thoroughfare connecting the London Fields with Goldsmiths' Row there is a shop which in bygone times was almost as much noted for its 'Hackney Buns' as the well-known Bun-house at Chelsea was for that particular kind of pastry."
Another store had also opened by 1842 in Church Street, now Mare Street, as shown in a painting in which "TUCK" is clearly displayed over the door. Thomas and his brother William Frederick Tuck arrived in Victoria, Australia aboard Ayrshire on 24 April 1852, and both opened similar stores, William as a confectioner in Melbourne and Thomas at the goldfields. "T J Tuck & Sons" is shown over the door of his store in the painting by Augustus Baker Peirce: "The Myers Creek Rush – near Bendigo Victoria" (located in the National Library of Australia in Canberra).
In Queensland the State Government introduced in 2007 a basic "traffic-light system" across all school Cafeteria, public and private. Green-category foods (fruit, vegetables, water, grains and nuts, etc.) are unrestricted. Yellow foods (some sweets, fruit juice) are meant to be consumed only about 3–4 times per month. Red foods (lollies, processed meals, soft drinks) are limited to at most twice per term (usually 10 weeks).
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