Greggs to rollout delivery nationwide after successful trials

The food-to-go retailer’s boss Roger Whiteside said he had been “pleasantly surprised at the extent of the demand for people” who want Greggs’ food to be delivered following trials in seven UK cities last year.

He said Greggs had trialled delivery with Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats, and said it would make a decision on which of the three food delivery apps it would choose to partner with later this year.

“In search of more market share we began to experiment with Uber, Deliveroo and Just Eat, and we’ve been pleasantly surprised to the extent of the demand for people who want it to be delivered.

“We’re going to roll out delivery, we just have to decide who with. That announcement is yet to be made, but that’s why we’ve been experimenting with the different choices that are available out there.”

Whiteside said offering delivery services also leads to higher average spend for customers compared to them coming into high street stores.

He said delivery customers “spend more because there’s a delivery charge” and the charge “sort of self-regulates deliveries because people don’t want to spend £1 on something that’ll cost £2.50 to deliver”.

Greggs’ chief executive said during trials with the delivery apps, customers spent on average three times more than bricks and mortar customers.

Store openings focus on travel locations

In its trading update this morning, Greggs said it would be targeting 100 new net store openings in the 2020 financial year. Whiteside said he would be focusing on travel locations and franchise openings.

“Most of our openings [this year] will not be on the high street because we’ve got the high street pretty much covered. We’re still seeing lots of opportunity yet to go at travel locations – train stations, office parks, drive-through and drive-by locations.

“Airports are starting to talk to us. Train stations are starting to talk to us and obviously we’ve got our franchise partners that are opening up in very many thousands of petrol forecourt operations that are out there. There’s more than enough scope [for growth].”