Our Store

Our Story -

Britain's Longest Established Family Pet Store.

Ernest Robinson 1929

Nick Robinson 2019

The Robinson family have been a part of Newcastle's Grainger Market for over 130 years. On the Shepstone side of the family, Arthur Shepstone was a Grainger Market inspector, and on the Robinson side George Robinson was a butcher in the Grainger Market. George's youngest son Ernest worked as a butcher with his father in the Market where he met Arthur's daughter Alice, who was working in the Grainger Market Weigh House.

Ernest and Alice were married in the early 1920's.

In 1929 Ernest went to the Grainger Market corn shop to buy seed and corn for his birds. When he got to the store the assistant told him that the goods he had ordered were not in stock because the owner had forgotten to order them.

Disappointed, Ernest told her that " this would never happen if this were my store, customers and customer service should come first" The shop assistant then told Ernest that he had the opportunity to prove his point because the corn shop was up for sale.

In the following days Ernest begged and borrowed enough money to buy out the lease of the store and on the 30th August 1929 the store at 187, Grainger Market became Robinson's Pet Store, where we have remained for over 90 years.

Early Version of our local delivery service

Ernest was succeeded by his 2 sons Kenneth & Edgar in the 1950's, who pushed the business on to a number of firsts for the pet trade.

In 1955 Robinson's Pet Store

opened Britain's first self service

pet store. The store was officially

opened by "The British Marilyn

Monroe" Sabrina.

Sabrina caused a stampede in Clayton Street, after officially opening the store, when she climbed out of a first floor window to throw postcards of herself to the crowd below. As the crowd surged to try to claim the postcards the Chief Inspector of Police on duty that afternoon dragged Sabrina back into the store saying " get back in here & stop throwing cards. I'm not having somebody killed on my watch over a pair of boobs."

Other "firsts" provided by the Robinson's were, Epro (taken from the letters of E P RObinson) Puppy-Pak which was the first canned puppy food in the world.

Epro Cat Food. One of the first all meat & liver cat foods in Britain. Guaranteed to contain no cereal.

Epro Diet 14 for Cats. Known as the caviar of cat foods with a 90% meat & fish content.

Epro Meat for dogs. Guaranteed all meat & liver with no cereal.

Diet 29 For Town Dogs developed to cope with the changed lifestyles of town living dogs with high quality meats and no cereal to help to control weight gain.

Even back in the 1960's we were enhancing the diets of pets and promoting natural feeding.

Epro worm tablets were world famous for their effectiveness.

Epro cat scratching posts were the first commercially available cat scratch posts in Britain.

The Robinson's have always been at the forefront of driving forward the Pet trade industry, and since the early 2000's we have once again been putting ourselves in the forefront and again become leaders in the promotion of more natural feeding regimes for pets. As you will see from this site we have a wide variety of some of the best natural food and treats available.

We are still run day to day by the Robinson family and we are proud to be Britain's longest established family pet store. The Company is now run by 3rd generation Nick Robinson and his wife Pauline.