The rise of the pastryarchy

The unstoppable march of high street bakery chains. Plus gorgeous warming pastry snacks: classic Australian party pies.

Has your high street been pastrified? Does the fug of baked goods from Greggs, Gail’s or Wenzel’s permeate your shopping precinct? Have these chains smellbowed their way into your world with the whiff of their hot pastry snacks?

In case you don’t live in Britain, this is the story of bakery titans on an unstoppable quest for high street domination, opening branches up and down the land faster than you can say rollout. And as much as the British love baked goods, not everyone here is happy about it. Pull up a sausage roll and I’ll explain.

Greggs is Britain’s bakery kingpin with a lip-smacking backstory. From humble beginnings in 1939 as a bread delivery service, the company has ballooned to national treasure status, with 2500 branches, plus a supermarket range. Through gimmicky marketing (jolly japes on social media, a clothing range, a jewellery line, and now Nigella as Christmas ambassador), Greggs has managed to convince us all that a “cheeky” sausage roll is a very good thing indeed. It’s where Everyman heads for inexpensive pastry snacks.

Gail’s, on the other hand, is a fancy coffee and pastry brand, known as a posterchild for gentrification and one that pretty much takes pride in its hefty prices (£4.30 for a sausage roll). The first branch opened in London in 2005, and Gail’s soon became catnip for well-resourced yummy mummies and those happy to queue and pay big bucks to feed their sourdough habits. Gail’s was bought by a US private equity firm in 2021 and now boasts 140 branches. It denies being a chain.

Wenzel’s is the dark horse in the race, the much less widely known outsider. Its home turf is northwest London, where it turned out its first loaf in 1975, and the brand has gradually expanded ever since. Today, it is found in more than 100 locations, and is described by some as a “posh” Greggs (🤔). From what I can tell, it sells much the same products, it just has shinier shopfronts.

Now, some of you might be thinking, what’s wrong with having access to a sausage roll wherever you happen to find yourself? Surely life is better if you’re never more than 6ft from a yum yum? Can you even imagine life in a neighbourhood with no pistachio financiers? But we’re not all on that page. Some people would like to see an end to the seemingly unstoppable march of chain bakeries. And I tend to agree. I mean, how many industrial complex sausage roll outlets do we really need?

In August, nearly 2000 residents of Walthamstow Village, an historic part of east London, signed a petition against Gail’s opening a shop there, arguing it could “overshadow” the “much-loved independent businesses” and “dismantle the character and diversity crucial to Walthamstow’s charm”. Meanwhile, hundreds of residents in Swaffam, a Georgian market town in Norfolk, are opposing a plan by Greggs to open a store on their high street, fearing a long-established family-run bakery will have its business decimated.

Such local pockets of opposition have come in for a fair bit of ridicule (nimbyism! snobbery!) but, to be honest, I understand the resistence. That’s because my own local high street recently fell victim to the pastryarchy.

One morning, a garish orange Wenzel’s sign on a shiny black hoarding appeared where the Nationwide Building Society used to be. It’s now a furuncle on what was a pleasant but unremarkable high street (we still have a shoe repair and key cutter, a pet shop, a haberdashers, a green grocer, a bookshop and two butchers). But that’s Wenzel’s intention, of course: to get noticed any way it can.

Actually, the aesthetics don’t bother me much; I love the fact my high street isn’t chichi. But there are three independent bakeries on our small strip, two of them old school family businesses. They sell iced buns, Dorset apple cake, loaves of bread and that kind of thing, really not so different to what Wenzel’s offers, but with an old fashioned touch. The difference is they don’t have the resources to compete with a £63 million baking behemoth with a whopper marketing budget, a loyalty programme, an app, rock bottom prices and in-your-face branding.

I worry that independent bakeries - not just the ones on my high street, but everywhere - will be tramped under the marching boots of the chains. Those yum yums we buy from Wenzel’s, the pricey panini we get from Gail’s, the ‘cheeky’ Greggs that mop up our hangovers, are more than just pastry snacks. They could also be last orders for the family bakery down the road.

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With my mind on baked goods lately, my recipe today is for Australian-style party pies, which have national treasure status back home. These delicious meat-filled mini pies, redolent with black pepper, have been a fixture at kids’ birthday parties and adult gatherings in Australia since the dawn of time. I decided against the fancy kind filled with chunks of slow-cooked prime beef. These are cheap and cheerful - the kind you might by frozen at the supermarket - made with mince. They are absolutely delicious and moreish, and they must be served hot with a big squirt of tomato ketchup. It’s not kind of pie you’ll ever find at a Gail’s.

NB: I didn’t invent the headline on today’s newsletter, I nicked it from the Daily Mail.