Which Greggs top sellers are foodie TOM PARKER BOWLES'S favourites... and which ... trends now
It’s been a good week for Greggs. Not only has the high street stalwart posted a 27 per cent increase in annual profits (and shared the love, via bonuses, with their employees), but it’s also knocked McDonald’s off the British breakfast top spot, too.
In fact, it seems that Britain’s most beloved baker can barely put a foot wrong.
Cheap and convenient, with many stores opening as early as 5am and not closing till 6pm, if you wanted you could eat breakfast, lunch AND dinner in a Greggs.
With nearly 2,500 stores in the UK (nearly 1,000 more than McDonald’s), you’re never too far from a steak bake, sausage roll or bacon butty.
And if you can’t be bothered to move from the sofa, Uber and Just Eat will deliver it all to your door.
Tom Parker Bowles checks out Greggs, 'purveyors of pure unpretentious pleasure'
They’re innovators too, masters of marketing and PR – introducing pizzas, salads, and flatbreads to the bakery staples.
What you won’t find is rare breed sausage rolls, sourdough pizza or artisan croissants. But that’s part of its appeal.
Greggs are purveyors of pure unpretentious pleasure, a place where fingers never wag, diets are never mentioned and your easy fix of salt, fat, sugar and carb-based delight is handed over with a smile and at a very reasonable price.
Here I pick Greggs’ top ten hits. Food snobs, be damned!
Bacon roll £2.90
The Greggs bacon roll - a true high street hero
Now this is a proper bacon roll. None of that sourdough nonsense, rather a soft white bun, lavished with butter, and filled with a generous mass of oven-cooked bacon. The meat is well done, the fat crisp. And while it’s not the best quality I’ve ever tasted (I doubt it comes from the happiest of pigs), there’s lots of it. Anoint with a great splodge of red sauce (not brown, you heathens) and you have one of the country’s great bacon rolls. A true high street hero.
4/5
Sausage roll £1.45
The sausage roll - a Greggs icon that tastes damned good
If you’re looking for some hand-crafted, artisanal beauty, then move swiftly on. The pork is cheap and almost certainly not free range, while the puff pastry is decent, rather than spectacular. But that’s not the point, as this is a Greggs icon, and for good reason too – it tastes damned good. The meat is well seasoned and the pastry has exactly the right balance between crisp and golden, and a little soggy on the inside. A classic Seventies sausage roll, the sort we devoured at birthday parties, alongside Hula Hoops and warm orange squash. Make sure you get ’em warm.
4/5
Steak bake £2.40
All hail the steak bake, perfectly engineered fast-food art
Now we are talking. Because this is not just the crowning glory of the Greggs menu, a gloriously meaty masterpiece, but one of the great British snacks, full stop. Slow cooked beef, rich and deeply flavoured, encased in the most winsome of golden, flaky puff pastry parcels. Just like the McDonald’s cheeseburger, it’s a perfectly engineered piece of fast-food art. In fact, I find it hard to pass a Greggs and not stop for a slice. All hail the steak bake. For truly, we are not worthy.
5/5
Tuna crunch baguette £4.15
The Greggs tuna crunch baguette - fresh, clean and not overly cloying
