As it happens, Greggs boasts a serious heritage. It was founded in Tyneside in 1939, which is a year before the first McDonald’s, and puts Nando’s and Pret a Manger to bed with a bottle of milk and a copy of A Cat in a Hat. Both of these were conceived in the late 1980s and took years to become famous. Nobody had heard of a “cheeky Nando’s” until well into the Noughties, possibly later. Greggs? Greggs has put in a shift.
The rise of the chain has been well documented in recent years. A little bakery from Newcastle started to acquire national cult status in the early 2000s, revelling in joy found by way of cheap sausage rolls. Patriotism and pride. Then came the boom proper. In a decade, 1,500 bakeries became 2,500. Greggs, decades-established in the North, emphatically took the South. Profits soared as ovens whirred. Greggs teamed up with Primark to launch a clothing range; with designer Dion Kitson to release branded jewellery. When the bakery launched its vegan sausage roll in 2019, the snack was, for a few hours at least, the most talked about thing in Britain.
