With breakfast pastries and coffee fresh on everyone’s minds this morning, asked our readers which high street bakery chain they preferred – Greggs or Gail’s?
The results are in – and in a landslide victory Greggs came out on top as the nation’s sausage roll sweetheart, with 72 per cent of readers voting for it as their favourite while Gail’s received a mere 28 per cent of votes.
The findings come amid a recent revolt against Gail’s – with critics suggesting the bakery opening a new outlet is a sure-fire indicator the area is being gentrified amid fears it could put independent eateries out of business.
Residents of Walthamstow in north-east London and Worthing in West Sussex recently pushed back on plans for Gail’s branches to open in their area and slammed the chain for ‘ruining high streets’.
Owners of family-run cafés have warned that existing local firms were ‘struggling as it is’ and could lose custom or even be forced to close if a Gail’s opened near them.
Gail’s chief executive Tom Molnar has instead insisted that he only ever wanted to give the customers choice.
He said: ‘We build small sites so they are a part of a diverse high street, so whenever I build a Gail’s I think what it would be like if I was a resident here.
‘I’d encourage people to look at what we’re trying to do, rather than taglines. There’s good independents and bad, and good chains and bad chains.’
Greggs has more than 2,400 stores across the UK – and Britons appear to love the bakery so much that Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in Edinburgh had its very own Greggs van dishing out sausage rolls to fans.
A Greggs vehicle also appeared in Ibiza today to celebrate Café Mambo’s 30th anniversary and has become a popular feature of celebrity parties, including Vicky Pattison’s wedding and Olly Murs’ baby shower.
Gail’s was founded in 2005 with the first opening on north London’s upmarket Hampstead High Street and has been dubbed the ‘middle-class Greggs.
It offers expensive artisan versions of classic pastries and is frequented by ‘yummy mummies’ cramming their prams between the tables and chairs.
Its rival Greggs has grown into a £3billion empire with bold promises to build a Greggs in ‘every town in Britain’, but it started out in 1939 as a humble bread delivery service for mining families in Newcastle.
The first official Greggs store opened in Gosforth, Newcastle in 1951.
It has since sprawled out across the country with one guaranteed to be just a stone’s throw away from you in any town and city.
Even former Conservative MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has spotted with a box of Greggs pastries on his desk.
The brand’s popularity has even led to a partnership with clothing store Primark twice to release ranges of merchandise including shoes, socks and hoodies – modelled by Lewis Capaldi and Kate Beckinsale.
Gail’s currently has 140 stores across the UK and is expanding rapidly to compete, but this readers survey today suggests the firm still has some catching up to do with Greggs.