Blue Riband Original Wafer: History, Layers and Tea

Blue Riband Original: Glasgow's Wafer Bar Explained

The Original is the plainest Blue Riband, and plainness is its job: a small, sealed, predictable bar made for packed lunches. It also carries the brand's history and, since late 2025, a changed coating worth knowing about.

Published 26 Sep 2026 Curator-written, not crowdsourced

Blue Riband Original: Glasgow's Wafer Bar Explained, in summary: Blue Riband was launched in Glasgow in 1936. The Original is four wafer layers and a praline filling under a chocolate flavour coating, six wrapped bars to a box, best kept cool and eaten beside strong, unsweetened tea.

Last reviewed by the teas.co.uk team in September 2026.

The Original is the plainest Blue Riband, and plainness is its job: a small, sealed, predictable bar made for packed lunches. It also carries the brand's history and, since late 2025, a changed coating worth knowing about.

From Kinning Park to Nestlé

Blue Riband began in Glasgow. Gray Dunn, the biscuit maker whose factory on Stanley Street in Kinning Park was built in 1862, launched the bar in 1936. The business was later acquired by Rowntree's, and the brand came to Nestlé in 1988, which has now owned it for close to four decades. It is a packed-lunch and mid-morning bar rather than a biscuit you put out for guests.

Of the Blue Riband lines we stock, the Original is the simplest. Nestlé describes it as four layers of crisp wafer with a creamy praline filling, under a smooth coating. In late 2025 Nestlé cut the amount of cocoa mass in the recipe, pointing to what cocoa now costs, and the coating is now described as a chocolate flavour coating rather than chocolate.

A deliberately small bar

Six bars share a 108g box, so each one weighs about eighteen grams, and each is wrapped on its own. That is the point of the format. The portion is fixed without anyone having to be disciplined about it, opening the box leaves the other five bars sealed and fresh, and a single bar survives a school bag or a coat pocket without breaking. Six bars is roughly a week of packed lunches.

The flavour is kept deliberately plain: sweet, crisp and gone in about three bites, with little left on the palate afterwards. That is why children tend to finish them and adults forget they are in the cupboard. Beside the Milk Chocolate Hazelnut and Vanilla White six-packs, the Original is the straightforward choice, and the twelve-bar Milk Chocolate box is there for bigger households.

Keep it cool, keep it out of the mug

Warmth is what ruins a wafer bar. The dry wafer itself copes well enough, but the filling and coating that hold it together soften long before you can see any change, and a bar that has gone soft and set again bends instead of snapping. Keep the box in a cool, dry cupboard rather than by the radiator or in a warm car, and the snap stays where it should be.

It is not a dunker. Unlike a digestive, which softens gradually, a wafer floods in an instant and folds. Put it beside the cup instead and let the cup do the balancing. Strong tea or black coffee without sugar suits it, since the bar has no bitterness of its own. A hot chocolate or a sweetened latte just doubles the sugar, with nothing in the cup or the bar to pull against it.

The packs we stock

Blue Riband Original Wafer Biscuit Bar Multipack, 6 Pack 108g (barcode 8445291095397)

What to drink with it

Yorkshire Tea Original Loose Leaf Tea, 250g: a brisk, strong breakfast brew with the grip a dry, sweet wafer needs.
Clipper Fairtrade Everyday Tea, 80 Pack 232g: an everyday tea bag for the packed-lunch flask, drunk without sugar.
Twinings English Breakfast Plant Based, 40 Tea Bags 100g: an English Breakfast for the mid-morning break, strong enough to balance the sweetness.

Elsewhere in the Blue Riband range

The full range is on the Blue Riband brand page.

FAQ

When was Blue Riband first made? Gray Dunn launched it in Glasgow in 1936. It later passed to Rowntree's and then to Nestlé in 1988.

What is inside a Blue Riband Original? Nestlé describes four layers of crisp wafer with a creamy praline filling under a smooth coating, now a chocolate flavour coating after a recipe change in late 2025.

What allergens does Nestlé list for the Original? Wheat and milk, plus a may-contain warning covering nuts, peanuts and soya. Read the current pack before it goes into a lunchbox.

How much does each Original bar weigh? About eighteen grams: six individually wrapped bars in a 108g box.

My Blue Riband bends rather than breaks cleanly. What went wrong? It got too warm at some point. Once a wafer bar has softened and set again the snap does not return, so store the box somewhere cool.

Curator's note: Buy it for the lunchbox and pour a proper strong tea alongside. Plainness is the point, and it does that job well. Lee, teas.co.uk, Tunbridge Wells.

In short: Blue Riband Original: Glasgow's Wafer Bar Explained

Field	Detail
Brand	Blue Riband
Packs we stock	6 Pack 108g
Category	Wafers
Dunkable	No, it collapses at once
Best with	Strong tea or black coffee, no sugar
Occasion	Packed lunches and mid-morning