Buttercup’s employees

l JANE MILLER was just 15 when she started work as a Buttercup shop girl at the end of the Second World War.

l “I worked at the Bowhill shop in Fife until it closed in 1949,” says Miller, below, (79). “I enjoyed my time there as I knew most of the customers. As it was just after the war, and we still had rationing, it was very exciting seeing all the new products. When the McVitie’s vans made their deliveries, they’d bring in boxes with biscuits that you’d never seen before. It was like Christmas!”

l Miller adds: “Cleanliness was important and I had to wash down the tiles and scrub the mosaic steps every day. The windows were kept spotlessly clean too. It was the Buttercup way.”

l Lifts to primary school in the Buttercup van was a highlight of 84-year-old RENA LLOYD’s time on the Corstorphine poultry farm. Her father, Robert Watson, was manager from 1935 to 37. The years she spent there made a lasting impression on Rena, but one event stands out in her mind: “I remember the terrible fire. I was in bed when it happened, and my dad went running down to the incubators. There was a photo of him in the paper, wearing his pyjama top. The next day we went down and everything was burnt. It was a real shame, Mr Ewing had the most cutting-edge equipment, and it was all destroyed. My father was terribly upset.”