The value-focused bakery chain is seeking to grow its presence at retail parks, railways stations, airports and supermarkets as it continues expansion beyond urban centres
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A Greggs site within a Sainsbury’s store in Cobham, Surrey | Photo credit: Greggs
Greggs will seek to further diversify its store portfolio beyond city centres in the second half of 2024 and focus outlet growth on locations where it is ‘underrepresented’, such as retail parks, transport hubs and supermarkets.
The value-focused bakery and coffee chain posted 13.8% year-on-year sales growth and opened 51 net new stores during the six months ending 29 June 2024 to reach 2,524 sites – 524 of which are franchised.
The operator also relocated 30 of its smaller outlets to larger sites in higher footfall locations and refurbished 81 stores to accommodate higher volumes of digital orders and hot food preparation.
“Shop relocations typically give our sites the space to embrace new channels and grow sales, whilst catchments from which we permanently withdraw a store are normally trading significantly below the group average. The diversity of the Greggs estate has also significantly evolved over the last 10 years. In 2014, 82% of our estate was located in cities, towns and suburbs; this proportion now stands at just 52%,” Greggs CEO Roisin Currie said in a half-year report.
Delivery orders generated 6.7% of sales across Greggs’ company-owned stores in the first half of 2024, up from 5.3% in the same period of last year. Additionally, the Greggs App was used in 18.3% of transactions, compared to 10.6% in the first six months of 2023.
Currie said the bakery chain remains on track to open more than 140 net new stores in 2024 and continues to work towards its long-term goal of operating more than 3,000 UK outlets.
Greggs also credited its expanded beverage menu as key to sales growth. A new iced beverage range, which includes Iced Lattes, Mango and Strawberry Coolers and Over Ice Americanos, is now available in 500 stores and will be rolled out to a further 200 sites in the second half of the year.
Greggs has further diversified its on-the-go beverage range with new Latte and Caramel Latte ready-to-drink (RTD) products.