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Gregg’s vegan sausage roll has proved so popular with vegans and non-vegans alike (with the exception of Piers Morgan!) that the bakery chain will be rolling the product out to over 1,800 stores across the UK.
High-street bakery chain Gregg’s long-awaited vegan sausage roll made it’s debut in the UK last week, and quickly became the company’s fastest selling launch in more than six years.
The meat-free sausage roll was initially rolled out in 900 stores but has proved so popular with vegans and non-vegans alike (with the exception of Piers Morgan who pretended to throw up on TV after trying the new vegan offering) that the chain has now confirmed the sausage roll will be making its way to over 1,800 Gregg’s stores.
In a statement, a spokesperson said the new product is “designed to mirror some of the sausage roll’s classic features, including 96 layers of light and crisp puff pastry, but instead is made with a bespoke Quorn filling”.
Unparalleled popularity
Discussing the unparalleled popularity of the vegan sausage roll, Roger Whiteside, Chief Executive at Greggs, said:
“It’s taken us by surprise quite how much excitement it has created. We’re not giving out numbers – it’s in the hundreds of thousands – but it is the fastest selling new product we have launched in six years. It’s literally flying off the shelves.
“We launched it in 900 shops. But with all the hype surrounding it, it sold out straight away and we have 900 shops who didn’t get it who are screaming out for it, so we are chasing our tail getting availability running.
“But you can’t just turn on a tap. We have to gear up production until we can respond and get the products out there, so it’s going to be hand to mouth availability in the next couple of weeks.
“We didn’t know if it would sell or not. Now we know it’s selling out we need to get it out there. The priority is to get it into existing shops, and then the other shops who didn’t get it will get it. We are pulling out all the stops to get it out there as quickly as possible.”
New vegan options
Whiteside has also teased the possibility that new vegan options will be coming to stores now, but is keeping tight-lipped on what we can expect to see:
“There’s nothing I want to alert the market to yet but yes, we now have three vegan products with the award-winning bean wrap, winter warmer soup and sausage roll, and we have teams looking at other options.
“Sausage rolls sales have actually gone up. People have come in looking for the vegan sausage roll but if they can’t find one, they are tempted to buy something else, which is often a sausage roll.
“Me personally, I’m a classic sausage roll eater, although I do like this (vegan) one.”