John Pyott

John Pyott (May 3, 1863, Dundee, Scotland – July 24, 1947, Port Elizabeth, Cape Province) was a South African baker and industrialist.

Early life in Scotland Pyott was the son of George and Margaret Pyott. He completed elementary school in his hometown and began working in his teens for the miller and bakery Lindsay & Law in Dundee. Before he emigrated to South Africa in 1882, he had already become the manager at one of the firm's branches at the age of twenty.

South Africa Pyott settled in Port Elizabeth, where he founded a small mill, and three years later, he offered his first commercial product, pastries. They were joined in 1887 by biscuits and in the following years by jam. In 1900, the business went public as a limited liability company, of which he was the managing director.

In the 1900s, Pyott's pastry and baking firm expanded to Woodstock, Cape Town, and in 1906 to Johannesburg, from which he fed the Witwatersrand and Transvaal. He also opened a store and factory in Durban, and despite fierce competition from local factories, his business was successful and won seventy awards from South African agricultural shows and other contests over its first twenty years in existence. and remains one of the leading baked goods brands in the country, now owned by AVI. He married Annie Mahaffey in 1884, and they had four sons and four daughters.