Sales are up 7.7 per cent. The company employs 33,000 people, most of them behind a counter asking if you want it heated. The shake-up will cost about £60 million now and save about £20 million a year later, which is the sort of arithmetic that makes a spreadsheet feel brave. Retail is safe. Manufacturing is being relocated to meet capacity for growth in the most cost-efficient manner. If you say that sentence out loud in Kelso it does not heat a steak bake.
Gosforth will stop making tinned bread. I did not know Greggs still made tinned bread. I am now mourning a product I never bought, which is the most British form of solidarity available on a Wednesday. Treforest keeps going as a depot. Clydesmill and Manchester will make fewer things. The queue at lunchtime will look the same. That is the point.
I am not going to pretend a chicken bake is a human right. I am also not going to clap for a press release that treats a factory like a seasonal menu. You can like the shops and still notice that “evolving” here means the same pastry, fewer towns, and a consultation that arrives after the map has been drawn. If the high street version of Britain is a paper bag and a hot drink, someone still has to put the filling in before 11am.
If you want to practise self-reliance before the next round of evolving, Amazon will sell you sausage rolls. They will not be a Greggs. They will not employ 740 people in County Durham. They will at least be honest about coming from a freezer.
I do not expect the consultation to un-close Penrith. I do expect the shops to be fine, because the shops were never the bit under review. The sausage roll survives. The factory is a phase. Remember that the next time a brand says it is only changing how it makes the thing you already eat.
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