Dedicated to doing good
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Here at Greggs, we know there’s more to life than making the world’s best Sausage Rolls, that's why we launched The Greggs Pledge.
In 2021, we committed to building stronger, healthier communities and playing our part in making the planet safer and becoming a better business for our colleagues and customers alike.
Now, as we reach the halfway point in our five-year sustainability plan, let’s take a look at the progress made on our commitments for the communities we serve.
Greggs Foundation Breakfast Clubs
You may have already heard about The Greggs Foundation Breakfast Clubs.
They started all the way back in 1999, to ensure that thousands of children could have a healthy start to the day. Breakfast Clubs have been fueling kids across the nation for a more productive day at school.
By the end of 2023, on every school day, we provided a free meal to more than 62,000 children across our network of 896 Breakfast Clubs.
We’re incredibly proud of The Greggs Foundation Breakfast Clubs, and we believe that the rising costs of living mean it’s more important than ever to help our local communities.
That’s why by 2025, we hope to be reaching 70,000 children on each school day.
For more information on Breakfast Clubs or the fantastic work of The Greggs Foundation click below.
Food waste
If you know Greggs, you know we really love food - and that’s why we send none of it to landfill. By 2025, we’re also committed to 25% less food surplus than in 2018.
Our famous bakes and Sausage Rolls are all freshly baked, while our selection of sandwiches are prepared daily in shop to make sure your breakfast, lunch or dinner is packed full of fresh flavour and fun. Because much of our tasty menu is fresh, a lot goes on behind the scenes to prevent surplus. We have brilliant shop teams who manage stock levels, while a forecasting system that helps us plan so we know what our customers will want so we don’t over order.
We achieved our food waste reduction target in all of our manufacturing sites in 2023 and we’re still working hard on cutting food surplus within our shops. More than a third of our unsold food has a second chance to be enjoyed via donations to good causes, such as Greggs Outlets, charity partners and foodbanks.
We also work with Too Good To Go, a brilliant food app that offers our customers a ‘Magic Bag’ of unsold food worth around £8 for under £3.
Outlets
As closing time approaches in many of our shops, unsold food is collected and distributed to one of our Greggs Outlets to be sold the next day at a tasty discount.
As well as acting as our unsung food waste heroes, Outlet shops are a safe haven for Greggs fans on a tight budget. We open Greggs Outlet shops in areas where families are likely to be hit hardest by deprivation issues. To protect those communities, we invest a portion of the profit from Outlet shops back into those areas via The Greggs Foundation by partnering or giving grants to local organisations.
In 2023, we opened 6 new Greggs Outlets and we have more on the way in 2024. By the end of 2025, we commit to having 50 Greggs Outlets providing affordable food and donating a profit share to give back to the local community.
To see if there’s a Greggs Outlet near you, click below.
Healthier choices
Now, we don’t want to blow our own trumpet, but we might just have this whole delicious food lark sussed.
Our aim is to offer a mouth-watering menu at purse-pleasing prices, but since setting out on our Greggs Pledge journey, we’ve also begun a mission to help our customers make healthier choices. By 2025, we vow that 30% of the items on our shelves will be healthier choices. We’re well on our way to achieving this and in 2023, we smashed our target.
Over the last 12 months, we bought 30% more vegetables than our baseline reporting year of 2019 to help our customers eat their five-a-day. We’ve introduced exciting new options such as flatbreads, sandwiches, salads, fruit pots and have expanded our vegan and vegetarian options to give more choice.
We won the healthy eating award at the 2023 Sandwich and Food to Go Industry Awards for our Sweet Potato Bhaji and Rice Salad Bowl.
Of course, we’ve not forgotten the Greggs favourites that you all know and love. By making small changes to reduce the amount of salt, fat or sugar we’ve been able to improve their nutritional value – and your tastebuds won’t even know the difference.
Packaging
The planet is a pretty brilliant place when you think about it – so we want to play our part in protecting it.
That’s why we’ve committed to using 25% less packaging in 2025 than in 2019 and over the last 12 months, we have made sure that 100% of Greggs branded printed packaging now carries a simple, recognisable recycling icon, helping our customers to get our packaging into the correct bins
We’ll likely always need packaging to keep our products fresh and safe to eat, but we’re getting smarter and are on the way to only using packaging that is both essential and made from the most sustainable materials.
We are tackling single-use plastics, eradicated unnecessary packaging, and reduced our use of things like stretch-wrap film and plastic trays, but we will carry on looking for ways to use even less.
Animal welfare
The welfare of animals in our supply chain is really important to us – and we only work with suppliers who align with our values.
To make sure we’re working with the right people, we’ve implemented the ‘Greggs Farm Animal Welfare Standards’ and we monitor how animals are treated through a number of measures, including site visits and animal welfare audits.
Our suppliers must meet and exceed our rules to ensure both the mental and physical well-being of animals reared to provide ingredients or products.
We recognise that animals are sentient beings that deserve to be treated with respect.
We ensure all animals in our supply chain are provided with fresh food and water, have shelter, are protected from pain, injury, disease or distress and have the freedom to express normal behaviours.