Greggs: How to Launch a Vegan Sausage Roll

Okay, it might not be technically ‘healthy’, but ‘vegan’ and ‘Greggs’ are not things that would usually go together in a sentence. The world is changing and people are eating less meat, so it’s not too much of a surprise.

Unless you’re Piers Morgan.

Of course no one was surprised that Piers decided to stick his oar in – Greggs included.

I feel really sorry for the people who made the vegan sausage roll (VSR) ad, as it’s a great little parody of Apple adverts and got hugely overshadowed by Piers Morgan (and others) having a meltdown.

Piers Morgan has spent all day today moaning about the whole thing, which I would suggest is sad but then I’m spending the day writing about it too…

Greggs fights back

In a world where vegans are often painted as the extreme and the outraged, it’s interesting to see just how livid people get over vegan or vegetarian food. Greggs’ announcement was no exception but, as they were prepared for Piers, they were also prepared for people who just couldn’t wrap their head around pastry that didn’t contain meat.

With a decent mix of passive aggressiveness and sass, the Greggs’ social media team’s replies to anti-VSR tweets were excellent.

It’s a great example of a brand not going on the defence instantly, which is often the go-to tactic for social media complaints. Instead, Greggs have okayed a slightly more boorish approach and stood behind their product.

So while the country debates if a sausage roll with no meat is really a sausage roll, let’s take a look at how the internet received Greggs’ bold new step into a plant-based world.

Has the Greggs vegan sausage roll been a success?

Let’s get anecdotal first.

I live in Brighton which is probably one of the most vegan-friendly places in the country. But with so much vegan choice around, could Greggs pull people in?

I thought they might, so I set off at 11:30am to the Greggs a few minutes away to get mine. I was greeted with this:

They’d all gone. There weren’t even any more to bake. Me and the three other people in the queue who were on the hunt for a vegan treat were disappointed. But I had a backup plan. I headed off to a Greggs a little further out from the city center to see if I’d have better luck.

At first it seemed disaster had struck again as I was faced with another empty wasteland of a tray. Hoping against hope I asked if there were any left. The cashier nodded, pointed at the oven, and said “Yeah, if you can wait 36 seconds.” I’ve waited 36 seconds before. Even longer than that sometimes. I could do it again.

I wasn’t the only one waiting. Everyone else in there was wanting one, too. I got mine and cleared out before I was mugged for them. Clearly the VSRs were a hit in Brighton, but what about elsewhere?

Here’s a thread from Robyn Vinter, Yorkshire resident and editor of the excellent Overtake, detailing her search for the Greggs VSR:

It clearly wasn’t just a southern thing.

We set up a query to track mentions around the VSR and when we looked at ones around products selling out, we found hundreds of people reporting they were struggling to find a roll for themselves.

Clearly they were popular, or at least they were attracting a lot of interest. As of writing we’ve found 62,000 people taking about them since the big announcement yesterday. We saw two main peaks: one with Greggs telling us about the VSR and the other around lunchtime of launch day.

The hype was leading hunger and we can thank, in part, Piers Morgan for it.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

As we’ve already mentioned, Piers Morgan came out against the VSR. Piers is a pretty divisive figure, mostly because he really likes saying divisive things. His tweets and appearances on Good Morning Britain often generate a lot of discussion, debate, and press coverage.

This was no exception. According to BuzzSumo, there has been 20 articles just talking about Piers’ tweets on the VSR, and Greggs’ response. That’s a nice bit of PR for Greggs (although their PR team obviously put some work in with 300 articles on the sausage roll itself in total).

Then you have to include everyone else getting involved to attack Greggs and those defending them (or just wanting to take a dig at someone). In other words, the VSR became the topic of the day (well two days) for UK Twitter.

This included a huge range of people, from political commentators:

To pop stars you forgot existed (no offence):

With all said and done, on Twitter alone the Greggs vegan sausage roll conversation saw over 516 million impressions.

While the VSR probably would have been a success without Twitter users all over the country arguing or throwing out witty quips, it certainly helped to keep the product in people’s minds after the original announcement had died away.

With sold out shops all over the country, it’s hard to call it a flop.