Greggs hit by weak sales on the high street

The pasty and sandwich specialist this week enlisted the help of five zombies in its digital campaign for its Halloween range.

Today Greggs, which has 1,600 shops in the UK, reported its financial figures for the 14 weeks to October 6.

A spokesperson for the baker said: "Consumers continues to show restraint in their spending and the adverse weather in July, followed by flooding in parts of the country at the end of September, also impacted sales in the period."

Greggs said it remained cautious about the economic outlook. Its spokesperson said: "We expected consumers to continue showing restraint and now anticipate like-for-like to remain negative in the final quarter.

"We will partially mitigate the impact of this lower like-for-like sales performance through tight control of costs and the increased profit contribution from wholesaling and franchising."

In the period, Greggs said it opened 37 new high street outlets, taking its total net opening for the year to 70.

Gregg’s strategy is to open the new shops away from traditional high streets.  It is also segmenting shops into three formats – food on the go, local bakery and coffee shops

This article was first published on Marketing