Greggs is a bakery chain with over 2,500 shops — more outlets in Britain than McDonald’s — selling hot savoury pastries, sandwiches and very cheap coffee. It began in 1939 as a Newcastle bakery run by John Gregg, delivering eggs and yeast by bicycle.
The sausage roll
The defining product: seasoned sausagemeat in flaky puff pastry, sold hot, for a price that has stayed deliberately low. Greggs sells well over a hundred million a year, and the hot cabinet by the door is the reason most people go in.
The other staples are the steak bake, the cheese and onion pasty, sausage and bean melts, and yum yums — a twisted glazed doughnut with a devoted following.
The vegan sausage roll
In January 2019 Greggs launched a vegan version using Quorn. The broadcaster Piers Morgan attacked it on Twitter as pandering to “PC-ravaged clowns”. Greggs replied with five words — “Oh hello Piers, we’ve been expecting you” — and the ensuing row ran for days across national media.
The product sold out repeatedly, sales rose sharply, and the share price jumped. It is now studied as a case in how to handle manufactured outrage, and the vegan range has expanded considerably since.
Why the British love it
Greggs occupies an unusual cultural position. It is cheap, it is everywhere, it is unpretentious, and it is Northern — and those things combine into genuine affection rather than mere convenience.
The company has leaned into this without becoming smug about it. It has produced a Greggs clothing collaboration with Primark that sold out, a Christmas advent calendar, and a limited-edition festive bake campaign that people genuinely anticipate. The brand is treated as an in-joke that Britain is in on.
The Greggs versus posh bakery divide
There is a running national joke about whether a town is “a Greggs town” or has been gentrified into artisan sourdough. In practice the two coexist everywhere, and a great many people who buy £4 coffee also buy a Greggs sausage roll and see no contradiction.
The charity
Less well known: the Greggs Foundation runs over 900 Breakfast Clubs in primary schools in deprived areas, providing free breakfast to tens of thousands of children every school day, and the company gives a fixed share of profits to it. It is a substantial programme and rarely mentioned in the jokes.