Greggs has reported a strong rise in full-year profits and sales but warned that its current year’s financial performance could be hit due to “the potential impact of coronavirus”.
Greggs reported a 27.2% jump in pre-tax profit excluding exceptional items to £114.2m in the 52 weeks to December 28 2019, bolstered by a 13.5% rise in total sales to £1.2bn.
Like for like sales in-store jumped 9.2% while total pre-tax profits stood at £108.3m for the year, up from £82.6m the previous year.
During the period, Greggs opened 97 net new stores and as of December 2019 had 2,050 shops trading. The food-to-go retailer also flagged that it was beginning its roll-out of its delivery partnership with Just Eat.
The business flagged it had experienced a strong start to the year, but saw significant slowdown in February due to the storms - like-for-like sales in the nine weeks to February 29 were up 7.5%.
Greggs boss Roger Whiteside said the six-year process of pivoting from a traditional high street baker to a food-to-go retailer was coming to an end, and stressed the next phase, which it calls ’Next Generation Greggs’, was “even more exciting” for the brand.
”People have seen the journey that we’ve been on. We’re currently at over 2,050 shops and we can certainly continue adding over 100 shops a year for the forseeable future. We don’t have a fixed number for the amount of shops we could have in the future, but we do know that there is potentially over 20,000 locations for food-on-the-go in the UK.
“We’re only 5% of a £24bn market and most of that business is done by customers who walk in. We know if we open up multichannel, we can offer customers better access to Greggs. The digital channels will enable us to do that in a way we weren’t able to do six years ago, because we weren’t on a centralised platform.”
Whiteside highlighted Greggs would look to offer more drive-thrus, more seats in-store, click and collect and customisable food.
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