Greggs tops £2bn annual sales and serves up £20m to staff
The bakery chain, which has more than 2,600 shops across the UK, saw sales rise by 11.3% from 2023.
Greggs has revealed a jump in sales and profits in 2024 as it launched new shops, extended its opening hours and raised prices.
Its boss also revealed some long-serving staff could pocket an £850 bonus after confirming a record amount would be divvied up through its profit-share scheme.
Shares in Greggs nonetheless plunged more than a 10th on Tuesday morning as the group signalled that sales growth was slowing.
The bakery chain, which has more than 2,600 shops across the UK, generated sales topping £2 billion – up 11.3% from 2023.
This was partly driven by the opening of about 225 new shops during the year, a record amount for the group.
Excluding the impact of new openings, sales grew 5.5% compared with the prior year, which reflected longer opening hours in some shops and the roll-out of delivery services, but weighed down by a generally tougher market over the second half of the year.
Furthermore, over the first nine weeks of 2025, sales growth slowed to 1.7% when compared like-for-like with the same period last year, Greggs revealed.
Greggs said many customers were continuing to worry about the cost of living including energy prices, mortgage and rent costs.
Chief executive Roisin Currie said consumer confidence remains low into 2025, and there was an ongoing trend of people “saving more than spending”.
“It’s been a challenging winter and I think we’ll continue to see that for the time being, and as we go through this year hopefully consumer confidence starts to strengthen,” Ms Currie told the PA news agency.
The chain raised the prices of some of its food items last year – most recently, the national price of its traditional sausage roll increased by 5p to £1.30, while other items such as coffee and doughnuts also rose by between 5p and 10p.
Ms Currie said the group raised prices to help mitigate the impact of wage increases, having upped the salaries of a large proportion of its staff at the same time.
Prices have not changed since then and she insisted there were no “firm plans” for further increases, although she added: “Unfortunately we have stayed in an inflationary environment, so therefore we have to make sure we react appropriately across the balance of the year.”
The group made a pre-tax profit of £203.9 million for the year, 8.3% higher than in 2023.
About 10% of this will be shared amongst eligible employees – those who have worked for Greggs for at least six months – through the group’s profit-share scheme.
This means it is dishing out a record £20.5 million this month, it confirmed on Tuesday.
Ms Currie told PA that long-serving staff – those who have done more than six years service and work more than 20 hours a week with the chain – will get around £850 extra at the end of March.
Greggs’ share price was falling by about 12% on Tuesday morning.
