Greggs to open champagne bar for Christmas
Greggs will open a 16-seat Champagne bar for Christmas where its sausage rolls and bakes will be served with glasses of Perrier-Jou?t.
The bakery chain plans to open the bar in Fenwick food hall in Newcastle. It will serve six of its best-selling products alongside Champagne from France and sparkling wines from Italy picked by the department store’s executive chef.
The tie-up brings together two of Newcastle’s best-known businesses: Greggs opened its first shop on Gosforth High Street in 1951, while Fenwick opened its first location in the city around 1882.
The menu will include dishes such as a sausage roll with hot honey sauce, steak bake with peppercorn aioli, and a sausage bean and cheese melt with Bloody Mary ketchup.
Diners can expect to pay significantly more for the privilege of eating these dishes at Fenwick’s than if they were to visit one of Gregg’s shops: the sausage roll and sauce will cost ￡4 compared to ￡1.45 from its bakery counters.
Accompanying champagnes, meanwhile, will range from ￡10 to as much as ￡75 for a glass of Louis Roederer Cristal. A quartet of cocktails have also been created for the Champagne bar including a Yum Yum Twist drink influenced by Greggs’ yum yum desserts.
It follows a similar stunt from the bakery chain last Christmas, when it launched ‘Bistro Greggs’, a pop-up restaurant – also in Fenwicks’ Newcastle store – pairing its baked goods with fine dining-style accompaniments.
Dishes included festive bake served with duck-fat roast potatoes, smoked pancetta, chestnuts and sprouts, and a Greggs’ steak bake served with creamy dauphinoise potatoes, green beans and sprinkling of almonds.
Greggs’ marketing stunts are not reserved to pop-up restaurants: the company recently launched a line of jewellery, featuring sausage roll earrings and a Greggs logo signet ring, and has also produced clothing in partnership with Primark.
The latest stunt comes on the back of a stellar few years for the chain, which has expanded rapidly across the country as the cost-of-living crisis has boosted demand for its affordable food.
There are currently more than 2,550 Greggs shops across the country and chief executive Roisin Currie has said she believes the chain could one day have more than 3,000. Its share price has surged by almost 22pc over the last year on the back of record profits.
While known for its sausage rolls and bakes, Greggs has begun selling more takeaway pizza and is keeping stores open longer into the evening in a bid to challenge more expensive rivals such as Dominos.