Going off (Greggs in general)

Member Name: iamasadlittleboy

Product:	Greggs in general
Date:	13/09/09 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice food, used to be at a nice price

Disadvantages: Prices going up...and up...and...

Having been a huge fan of Greggs for about 6 years I'd often find myself requesting some of my mothers change to go get a pie for lunch when we were in town. Now a days I'm more likely to actually avoid the bakers on a day to day basis, despite working in a town where theirs 2 of them. Despite the fact the store has increased it's range and has started to do more healthy options it's easily gone backwards in the realms of customer satusfaction.

For those few who don't know quite what Greggs is, it's a national (United Kingdom) based bakery that has grown and grown over recent years. The stores do pies, pastrys, sausage roll and cakess as they have done for years but have started to sandwhiches, drinks, and crisps in recent years adding an healthy options to counter act the fatty pastry based options of much of the store. With a store identity of a British bakery counter acting the fast food of the American fast food places littered about the high streets with places like KFC, McDonalds, Burger King and Subway, you would expect it to appeal to the British traditionalist. The pie lovers, rather than the burger and fries guys.

Now I'm a fan of the fatty pastry based stuff, I would be a fan of the sandwhiches but they all seem to sufferer from the idea that EVERYONE likes tomatoes, thus I won't them, the texture puts me off automatically. So I'll have to stick to the warm food, and as I don't like cheese I'm limited again to what I can have.

Having for years loved their pies I've recently refused to buy them, as they we're originally the thick pies we're used to and retailing at around 85p each they represented great money. They we're filling and had plenty of meat inside them, they we're occasionally a pain to get out of the container but they tasted brilliant and in fact we're rather heavenly as far as you can say that with pies. Now costing £1.07 and being thinner and much less filling, they represent pretty much no value for money, they taste a lot worse than they used to and have much less contents inside of them.
The suasage rolls are another snack I have loved from Greggs for years, often having on of the ones mum bought as part of a 3 for or 4 offer that Greggs seemed to have.These seem to have almost doubled in price in the past 4 years and as a single unit are pretty unaffordable.
Cornis pasty's are the final one of the snacks on offer I'm likely to try, and costing £1 now (they were in the 70p range a few years back) they don't look good value though they are the best tasting of the three options. Out of the three things that I've mentioned so far these are my favourites. Though it must be mentioned that in Scotland they do an item calla Bridie, these are like a bigger better version of the Cornish Pasty's.

The rest of the stock as far as the warm stuff include steak bakes, chese bakes and a few other things but nothing I'm willing to try.

So whatelse, well I must admit the staff are always polite and nice and polite, they never seem to grump at the fact they see me walk in have a nose at what they have left (my work shift isn't meal friendly) and walk out.Though the prices may be unbearabley high (70p for a can of coke) the quality of food available is nice, though it does seem to have gone down as the quality has risen over the past few years, the correlation of the prices rising, quality lowering and ranges expanding all seem rather an odd combination but they do seem to have gone together...

Overall I do like Greggs, really I do, but they do seem to be trying to make it harder to like them. In fact I'm starting to go off them due to regular price hikes that seem pointless, come on guys we're in a recession stop trying to bleed your customers dry or we will tell you we're to go.

Summary: They need to realise the prices are taking the mick before it's too late