Bakery giant with over 2,500 branches across the UK to shut store for good

A POPULAR bakery chain has told customers to say farewell to one of its branches for good.

The bargain pastry and sandwich chain - with over 2,500 locations across the UK - has confirmed it will draw its shutters down for the last time today.

A Greggs store in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, has had to break the sad news to its local fans.

The branch, on Sycamore Road, will bid farewell to its shoppers on Saturday, January 18.

This location will reportedly close due to a dispute over rent, according to the .

The Amersham store's original lease will come to an end after this month.

An employee at the doomed location reportedly claimed the high rent requested would make the spot profitless.

The worker revealed the store made some desperate changes in an attempt to keep it running.

They said: “We did try a few things, we used to be open until 6 o’clock.

“We changed that opening time to seven to see if we could get some trade in the evening, that didn’t really work out."

This employee also praised their customers and the local community.

“They’re so nice, they make you feel like you’re part of the family. It’s just a really nice place to work."

One fan revealed their anger at this closure and said they would ditch shopping in Amersham because of this.

The furious Greggs lover wrote: "As Gregg's is now closing there is no point in us going there to do our shopping we have decided to go to chesham on Saturday instead."

This Greggs location has not been the only store to shut in recent weeks.

A branch in Coventry closed for good on January 4, The Sun has previously reported.

The Foleshill closure was confirmed to The Sun by Greggs.

This nationwide chain added that it was not part of any wider plans to cut branches.

It had hoped to redeploy the existing staff to nearby stores.

But the chain still has thousands of stores across the country.

Big businesses like Greggs will review the performance of each store regularly and decide whether to keep them open or not.

Sometimes they may decide to open a store in a different - more popular - location, but it doesn't mean that the chain is struggling.

It is quite normal for businesses to do on a regular basis.

ON A ROLL

Meanwhile, the boss of Greggs recently confirmed that the price of sausage rolls and other favourites have been hiked after an increase in wage costs from the Budget. 

The price of a sausage roll has been increased once again to £1.30 nationally, up from £1.25.

The rise means that the Brit favourite jumped by more than a third since it cost £1 in 2022.

At some travel locations, such as London Bridge, the price of a sausage roll has increased from £1.50 to £1.55.

Ms Currie said that Greggs had increased wages by 6.1% for staff in line with the increase in the national living wage while the Budget’s change to national insurance contributions added around 1% of inflation to the company's costs.

The Greggs chief said that despite the Budget making the cost of doing business more expensive Greggs would not be changing its growth or investment plans for new stores.

“There are still places where you cannot access Greggs. We are confident in the continuing growth of Greggs”.

Greggs is still planning to open between 140 and 150 shops this year, adding to its existing 2,618 shops.

Ms Currie said that while “consumer confidence has fallen, disposable income has actually improved so I think we will see an improvement when consumer confidence improves”.

The comments came after Greggs toasted more than £2billion of sales in 2024 for the first time, a 11.3% increase on the previous year’s £1.8billion. The firm opened 226 shops last year.