Greggs is worth waxing lyrical about: it's on a roll

When I read that the museum’s “artists have put in numerous hours to capture every detail of this popular menu item”, I pictured skilled artisans with tiny paint brushes peering with utmost seriousness at Britain’s favourite lunchtime snack, the earnestness of their demeanour only increased by their desperate struggle to ignore their tastebuds, now loudly crying out for warm pastry.

But I long ago learned not to be snobbish about Greggs, a rare success story among the economic rubble of Britain. In 2019, I went to Newcastle, where the company has its HQ, to investigate its astonishing success (last year, the baker made a pre-tax profit of more than £200m on sales of more than £2bn). At the time, I’d never eaten anything from Greggs, a fact that delighted Roger Whiteside, its then chief executive (perceptions of Greggs were changing, and he saw in me a new customer). But ever since I’ve been, if not exactly a regular, then one of its more unlikely defenders.

Everything I learned on that visit delighted me, from the company’s history (it began life in 1939, when a Newcastle man called John Robson Gregg started selling eggs and yeast door to door on his bicycle), to the way it treats its staff (it operates a generous profit share scheme), to its respect for local tastes (in the north-east, it sells stotties; in London, Tottenham cakes).

A Greggs bacon bap, made to order with your choice of sauce, is one of the most morale-boosting treats a person can have ahead of yet another depressing train journey. Obviously, I don’t agree with the society decorator Nicky Haslam, who once declared its coffee to be “the best” (there are limits). But whenever I see its logo, I’m suffused with warmth and the sense of an ongoing miracle: something that actually works, when so much else is broken.

It’s very funny, and very nasty. Scrolling their phones, they learn of widespread “genocide-proximate” attacks and multiple nations defaulting on their debts. But no matter. The Earth is just a starter planet, they have as many sliders as they can eat for dinner (and a turbot for “picking”), and their thoughtful host has arranged special “little whisky plinths” for the bottles they’ll drink when they play poker.

When my consultant first went through the list of internal organs that would have to go, I was moderately unruffled. Through my mind a ticker tape was already running, a paragraph that began: “This is like the Generation Game conveyor belt… Please let me keep the Teasmade!”

Images courtesy of Greggs/ Madame Tussauds