Roisin Currie: How Greggs scaled without losing its "small business" feel

Greggs has become one of Britain's most recognisable brands. Straddling a serious mix of customer profiles, it's now frequently name-checked by everyone from American YouTubers, to a former prime minister. Founded as a door-to-door bread round in Newcastle in 1939, the bakery chain now runs more than 2,600 shops across the UK, more than McDonald's or Starbucks.

Yet, as chief executive Roisin Currie tells Graham Ruddick on the Business Leader podcast, many customers still think of it as their local baker. Speaking from Greggs' Newcastle base, Currie explains how the business balances rapid growth with the culture that made it popular in the first place and why she believes its "secret sauce" is its 33,000 colleagues.

During our interview, you will learn about:

• Why Greggs is more likely to say no to brand collaborations
• How colleague feedback, not just sales data, decides whether a new product gets rolled out
• The "fail fast" work culture behind the famous vegan sausage roll
• How Greggs plans to grow to 3,500 shops despite a tougher stock market reaction in 2025

The secret to Greggs' cult following

Greggs' recent marketing stunts, a clothing range with Primark, a champagne bar with department store chain Fenwick and a Christmas advert with Nigella Lawson, have kept the brand firmly in the cultural conversation. Currie puts this down to humility rather than ego. "We're quite a humble brand and I think we still feel like a really small business," she reveals. "We're willing to try something that's maybe a bit tongue in cheek, knowing some people might have a laugh at us and actually we don't mind that."

She credits her team with knowing when to say no. "The skill of the team is probably that they say no to more than they say yes," Currie explains. "If you had an ego as a brand, you might lean into more of those collaborations just because you think you'll get reach. But the team are really good at picking the ones that are a little bit more left field and quirky."

Currie is adamant that seniority brings no special access. When Greggs launched its Primark range, she queued for the first drop in Leeds like everyone else. "That's really important, because I remember being able to talk to colleagues and look them in the eye when they said, 'I queued up on Saturday morning.' I was like, 'So did I'."

The first drop sold out instantly and demand kept climbing. Currie says a friend in New York later sent her a photo of a stranger walking across Brooklyn Bridge dressed head to toe in Greggs merchandise.

How colleague feedback shapes the Greggs menu

Currie repeatedly returns to one theme: Greggs' 33,000 colleagues, not any single strategy, are what she calls the business's "secret sauce". "If I wasn't here tomorrow, this business would continue," she says. "Our teams in our shops and bakeries don't just deliver their job, they go above and beyond."

That extends to product development. The vegan sausage roll, now a fixture of the range, took the food team roughly two years of trial and error to get right. "There were lots of failures along the journey," Currie says. "They didn't think the quality was great, they didn't think the taste was great, so they just kept going. We call it fail fast." When it finally launched, in a limited number of shops as a planned 12-week rotational product, queues formed outside stores and Greggs had to ask its supply chain for far more volume than originally planned.

The same fail-fast approach applies today. A recent trial of new products across just 10 Manchester shops identified a mac and cheese dish as the clear winner and Greggs has since moved into wider rollout. Currie says shop teams' feedback carries as much weight as sales data: if colleagues say a product is too complicated to prepare consistently, it's reworked – regardless of how well it is selling.

She traces this openness partly to her time at Asda in the 1990s, where she learned the concept of "courageous conversations", structured, honest feedback built around likes, concerns and suggestions. Greggs also shares 10 per cent of its profits with colleagues each year, a scheme dating back to former chairman Ian Gregg, which Currie says helps reinforce that "we're all in it together".

How Greggs has brought its OG customers along

Greggs' 2024 results were the strongest in its history: sales rose 11 per cent to £2bn and pre-tax profit rose 8 per cent to £204m. Even so, its shares fell by around a third during 2025, as investors weighed rising costs following the Budget against a UK consumer that Currie says is "saving, not spending".

"I can't manage what the stock market does," she says. "I can make sure we're telling a really good story and that we're delivering the numbers."

The business is investing heavily to support further expansion, including two new production sites, as it targets an estate of up to 3,500 shops. That growth is changing the shape of the business: a decade ago, the large majority of Greggs shops sat on the high street, whereas today around half do, with the rest in locations such as train stations, retail parks and universities. Delivery – via Uber Eats and Just Eat – and evening trade are now central to the growth plan, alongside new store openings.

Currie describes the shift as "evolution, not revolution", a pace of change designed to bring long-serving colleagues along rather than leaving them behind. Greggs now serves eight million customers every week, a figure she says reflects decades of gradual change that most customers have barely noticed.

From the Asda tills, to the Greggs boardroom

Currie's path to the top began, by her own account, with good luck and good timing. She spent around 20 years at Asda, starting on the cigarette kiosk while at university and working her way up to checkout supervisor, then deputy customer service manager, before joining the graduate programme under Archie Norman and Allan Leighton's 'Asda way of working'. "As an undergraduate, I was almost getting trained in leadership skills at a very young age," she says.

She joined Greggs in 2010 as people director. Her predecessor as chief executive, Roger Whiteside, later expanded her role to include shops and property, before she succeeded him as chief executive when he stepped down in 2022.

Currie credits Whiteside with pushing her to put herself forward for the top job. "I never had an ambition to be a CEO," she says. "My ambition was always just to do a really good job in the role you're given today." Now leading a team of nine direct reports, Currie says she deliberately surrounds herself with people better at their jobs than she could be.

"I want my retail director to be much better than I ever was, because the sum of the team is much more powerful than having a great CEO and nine direct reports who just agree with everything," she explains.

For a business now valued at around £2bn on the stock market, Greggs' scale sits oddly alongside its self-image. But that, Currie suggests, is precisely the point: staying close to colleagues and customers is what has let a Geordie bread round become a national institution, without losing the feel of a local baker.

Roisin Currie's four lessons for leaders

Let your team say no more than it says yes. Greggs' collaborations work because the team rejects far more pitches than it accepts, rather than chasing every bit of reach on offer. Saying yes to everything makes a brand feel desperate, not popular.

Weight colleague feedback as heavily as sales data. A product can be selling well and still get pulled if shop teams say it's too hard to deliver consistently. If the people doing the job can't make it work, the numbers won't save it for long.

Test small before you scale. Greggs trialled its recent mac and cheese launch in just 10 shops, and spent two years failing quietly on the vegan sausage roll before it worked. Small, cheap failures are how you earn the right to a big rollout.

Grow at a pace your people can follow. Currie calls Greggs' expansion "evolution, not revolution", deliberately pacing change so long-serving colleagues aren't left behind. A strategy that outruns your own team isn't a strategy; it's a gamble.

Listen to the full interview with Greggs CEO Roisin Currie on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.