Dedicated to doing good
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We know there’s more to life than making the world’s best Sausage Rolls, that's why in 2021 we launched The Greggs Pledge.
We committed to building stronger, healthier communities, making the planet safer and becoming a better business.
As we near the half-way mark to our five-year sustainability plan, below we've outlined our key areas of focus and the commitments we've made to the communities we serve.
Greggs Foundation Breakfast Clubs
Some of you may have already heard about Greggs Foundation Breakfast Clubs.
The Greggs Foundation started the clubs way back in 1999, to ensure thousands of children could have a healthy start to the day and go to the classroom fuelled for a more productive day at school.
By the close of 2022, every school day we provided a free meal to more than 49,000 children across our network of 7894 breakfast clubs.
While we’re incredibly proud of the Greggs Foundation Breakfast Clubs, we know that rising costs of living and the energy crisis mean we need to do more for the communities we serve. That’s why by 2025, we hope to be reaching 70,000 children every school day.
For more information on Greggs Foundation Breakfast Clubs or the fantastic work of the Greggs Foundation click below.
Food waste
If you know Greggs, you know we really love our food - and that’s why we send zero waste to landfill. We’ve also committed to 25% less food waste than in 2018 by 2025.
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. As so much of our tasty menu is fresh, a lot of hard work goes on behind the scenes to prevent wastage. Our brilliant shop teams manage stock levels, while a forecasting system helps us plan for what our customers will want so we don’t over order.
We achieved our food waste reduction target in our manufacturing sites in 2022 and we’re still working hard on cutting waste within our shops. More than a third of our unsold food is given a second chance via donations to good causes, such as charity partners and foodbanks.
We also work with Too Good To Go, a food app that offers our customers a ‘Magic Bag’ of unsold food worth around £8 for just £2.59. What a bargain.
Outlets
When closing time calls, much of our unsold food is collected and distributed to one of our Greggs Outlet shops to be sold the next day at a hefty discount.
As well as being our unsung food waste heroes, our Outlet shops are a safe haven for Greggs fans who manage on a tight budget. We open Greggs Outlet shops in areas where families are likely to be hit hardest by issues like food poverty or deprivation. To protect those communities, we invest a portion of the profit from the Outlets back into those areas via the Greggs Foundation by partnering or giving grants to local organisations which have tackling food poverty at the heart.
In 2022, we opened 10 new Greggs Outlets and we have a further nine on the way in 2023. By 2025, we commit to having 50 Greggs Outlets providing affordable food with a share of the profits giving back to the local community.
To see if there’s a Greggs Outlet near you, click below.
Healthier choices
We don’t mean to blow our own trumpet, but here at Greggs, we reckon we might just have this whole delicious food lark sussed.
We offer a mouth-watering menu at purse-pleasing value, but since setting out on our Greggs Pledge journey, we’ve also begun a mission to help our customers make healthier choices. We vowed that by 2025, 30% of the items on our shelves will be healthier choices. We’re well on our way to achieving this and in 2022, we smashed our target.
In 2022, we bought 12.5% more vegetables than the previous year to help our customers eat their five-a-day. We’ve introduced exciting new options such as soups, sandwiches, salads, fruit pots and have expanded our vegan and vegetarian options to give more choice.
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 made changes that will allow 130 tonnes of plastic to be removed from our business operations each year.
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’ve already removed the thin plastic wrap on boxes of our tea, introduced at least 50% recycled materials in the packaging used for our Greggs drink bottles and pasta salad pots and by reducing the thickness of the cardboard packaging of our Yum Yums, Belgian Buns and two packs of doughnuts by just 10%, we’re able to use 14 tonnes less cardboard each year.
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.