Bakery chain Greggs has opened its third Tasty by Greggs café within Newcastle city centre's Primark store.
The 114 seat café is the latest in the brand's partnership with the fashion retailer and follows openings in Birmingham last February, and in the London flagship Oxford Street East store in October. Greggs has invested in a novelty interior at the Northumberland Street site - its 13th location in Newcastle city centre.
It follows a record year of new store openings last year for the food-on-the-go firm, which currently has 2,300 shops nationwide and has talked of ambitions to have "significantly more than" 3,000. Speaking to BusinessLive in January, Roisin Currie, Greggs' chief executive, said the partnership with Primark represented a savvy marketing move rather than a key generator of revenue.
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She said: "It’s been a lot of fun and had a lot of talkability. It gets the brand out there and talked about it. Commercially, it’s not significant other than it really does help the brand. There’s nothing in the pipeline right now but we’ll continue to look at what partnerships and collaborations we may have in 2023."
The Primark collaboration has also involved three lines of Greggs branded clothing, which earned significant social media attention and follows an earlier tie-up with Playstation. In a bid to encourage customers to share pictures of the new café on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, Greggs has kitted it out with includes doughnut inspired seating booths, a sausage roll swing, a Tyne Bridge design and an interactive Greggs phone box.
Tony Rowson, property director at Greggs, said: "Following the success of our first two ‘Tasty by Greggs’ cafes in Birmingham and London last year, the opening of our third café in Newcastle, the home of Greggs, marks another milestone moment for us as we continue to focus our efforts on new on-the-go locations where people work, shop and travel."
In results for 2022, in which Greggs posted sales of £1.5bn and pre-tax profits of £148.3m, the firm said it was targeting 150 net new store openings this year and was considering locations such as inside supermarkets, in airports and railway stations, as well as in retail parks and shopping centres.
Tim Kelly, director of new business development at Primark added: "We’re thrilled with the success of our partnership with Greggs to date – ranging from three sell-out collections to now three brilliant cafes, we’re constantly on the lookout for new ways to inspire and excite customers. We’re excited to be extending our partnership to new locations including Newcastle so more customers can visit two of the best brands on the British high street in one go."
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