How I sold Greggs to the middle classes

Roger Whiteside is a very happy CEO indeed. At the Kingsway branch of Greggs where we meet for our 8.30am interview, staff are so flat-out serving breakfast to a long queue of hungry office types, tourists and construction workers that the boss cheerfully nips behind the counter himself, to find a vegan sausage roll for us to photograph.

Personable and down-to-earth, dressed in a smart button-down checked shirt but no tie, Whiteside is also direct: I imagine he brooks no nonsense with employees. Today he’s chirpy, which is hardly surprising. Those sausage rolls have changed perceptions about Greggs, as well as its fortunes, in what’s been a stellar year for Britain’s bakery giant. And according to Whiteside, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

At a time when many British high-street chains are failing, Greggs is an unlikely success story. It will open its 2000th shop, in South Shields, on Friday, fresh from posting a 58 per cent surge in profits and a near 11 per cent rise in like-for-like sales in the first half of the year. That’s after breaking through the £1 billion sales barrier in 2018.

“It’s amazing to think how far this business has come since it started as a single shop on Tyneside in the 1930s,” Whiteside says. It’s true: you can now find Greggs in the poshest bits of London, including a branch to tempt MPs in Westminster tube station.

Things haven’t always been this rosy, of course. When Whiteside, now 61, took the helm in 2013 after five years on the board, the company was recession-battered and bruised. His first task was to shadow a branch manager for a fortnight so he could see what was happening on the front line. It was quickly obvious the business needed a new battle plan. Customers weren’t buying bread at all, the staple on which the whole company was founded; they wanted coffee, sandwiches, bakes and food they could eat on the go.

But competition on the high street was ferocious. Upstarts Costa and Subway had become ubiquitous, seemingly overnight, and were stealing the march. Greggs needed a transformation. Whiteside redesigned the shops, ditched the bread side of the business, improved the coffee and overhauled the menu to include healthy options like fruit pots, wraps, soups, low-calorie sandwiches, porridge and hot breakfast goodies. None of it was ground-breaking – he admits to nicking product ideas from London rivals – but he knew Greggs could turn out the same quality food for less.

“The thing that people misinterpret in the UK market is that if it’s low price it must be low quality,” he says. “But customers are wising up to that because of what I call the Aldi/ Lidl effect. Low price doesn’t have to be low quality.”

Of course, the £1 vegan sausage roll was the game changer.  When Piers Morgan decried Greggs bosses as “PC-ravaged clowns”’ for putting it on the menu, the ensuing social media storm proved publicity gold. The Quorn-filled-pastry-snack became a national - nay - global talking point, and a legion of new customers – erstwhile “Greggs rejectors”, as Whiteside puts it – were lured in.

“They came to see what all the fuss was about,” he says.  Among them were customers in the “weight and wellness” category; previously sniffy about sausage rolls. They had never set foot in a Greggs before but, once through the doors, loved its new healthy range. And – bonus! – everyone started buying the not-so-healthy stuff too. Suddenly, Greggs sausage rolls were an acceptable guilty pleasure.

“It has taken us by surprise,” Whiteside says. “We’re selling more pasties, sausage rolls, doughnuts, cakes and so on than ever, as well as the healthy stuff like porridge.”  Customers are now a broad church of young, old, hipster, traditionalist, well-heeled and budget-conscious. Even Hollywood actor Jake Gyllenhaal has revealed he’s a fan when he’s in town.

To be honest, I haven’t sampled Greggs for years (the last time was to mop up a hangover) although my vegetarian teenage kids *adore* the vegan sausage rolls. But it’s not just about the food: Whiteside’s mantra, and key to his ambitious plans for the business, is convenience. He learnt its importance at Marks & Spencer, which he joined after completing an economics degree at the University of Leeds. He expected to stay a couple of years. That turned into 20, and he ended up heading its food division and overseeing the launch of Simply Food, its speciality food stores.

It was also where he realised the potential of food on the go. At one point he was in charge of packaged sandwiches, a product M&S pioneered in the early 1980s. He persuaded bosses to take the radical step of making space for sandwiches in the ground-floor dress department, arguing that the basement food hall was too inconvenient for time-pressed workers.

“M&S had created convenient food, selling it in the least convenient place,” he says. Whiteside’s strategy worked. “That’s when I knew convenience was number one.”  He proposed a chain of standalone M&S sandwich shops (around the same time Pret became the first major high street food shop to sell sandwiches in a cardboard box). But the powers-that-be at M&S weren’t interested. And, to compound his frustration, they didn’t want to sell groceries online either.

So, keen to join the dot com revolution, Whiteside left in 2000 to help set up Ocado the online grocer, which was, as we all know, a cracking success. (Whiteside acknowledges the irony that Marks & Spencer and Ocado will soon join forces in an online grocery venture). And now he wants Greggs to be similarly convenient.

“The past seven years of modernising, that’s just the starting line, “ he says.

Over the next few months Greggs will build on its growing popularity by entering the takeaway dinner market and – contain yourselves, flaky pastry fans – home delivery. In an extended trial, a handful of stores in Manchester, Newcastle and London (Whiteside wouldn’t reveal which ones yet) will remain open into the evening, serving a new dinner menu. Those same shops will also offer home delivery, a concept the company has successfully trialled in a couple of branches during the day, using Deliveroo and Just Eats.

“We’ve been surprised at the level of demand there is during the day,” Whiteside admits. “But we think this will accelerate our penetration of the evening market.” He’s convinced that workmates, friends, students and families will love the convenience of getting Greggs delivered to their door, just like pizza or Indian takeaway.

Though the number of Greggs shops will grow over the next five years to 2,500, its high-street presence will shrink. Whiteside says it’s just not where customers are anymore, so for every three new Greggs that open in retail parks, train stations, airports and other transports hubs, one high street branch will close.

There will also be more Greggs drive-thrus – there are currently four in Newcastle, Manchester, Leicestershire and on the M6 near Blackburn – so customers won’t even have to get out of their cars for a Greggs fix, a click-and-collect service and a digitally-based Greggs loyalty club, of all things. Meanwhile, the Greggs innovation team is now madly working on a new product they hope can replicate the internet-breaking success of the vegan sausage roll. Whiteside’s lips are sealed, except to say it’s another plant-based version of a very popular product – my money’s on a vegan ‘steak bake’ – and will precisely mimic the taste and texture of meat.

Did you hear that, Piers? Greggs is on a roll.