Greggs set to make bakery redundancies
High Street bakery and food-on-the-go business Greggs may make up to 410 redundancies from the closure of remaining in-store bakeries and restructuring management and support teams. Meanwhile, Greggs revealed it enjoyed a 4.8% increase in total sales over Christmas and the new year.
In the five weeks to January 4 it also saw a 3.1% rise in like-for-like sales with increased demand for sandwiches, savouries and drinks.
A limited range of Christmas food including festive bakes and sweet mince pies also sold well.
Greggs,which now has 1,671 retail outlets throughout the UK, saw sales rise by 3.8% overall with like-for-like down 0.8% for the year to December 28 reflecting difficult trading conditions in the early part of the year.
Chief executive Roger Whiteside said: "I am encouraged by the improvement in trading that we achieved as we progressed through the year, in part reflecting our new 'Bakery food-on-the-go' strategy. As a result, full year results should be in line with our previous expectations.
"Whilst we face a number of challenges in the coming year we remain confident that we can make further progress with our strategic plan."
Those stores that still have in-house bakeries will in future be supplied by its regional bakeries.
Greggs carried out a record 216 shop refits in the year. It opened 68 new shops, including 15 franchised shops.
