Greggs

About Greggs

There's a Greggs on almost every high street in Britain, but Gosforth's has a claim none of the others can match — the very first Greggs shop opened on this High Street in 1951, making it the birthplace of what is now the UK's largest bakery chain. That year John Gregg bought Mason's at 69-71 Gosforth High Street for around seven thousand pounds, chiefly for the bakery at the back, which let the family produce their own baked goods for the network of delivery vans that had run since the 1930s. By 1953 the operation was one shop and six vans; John Gregg died in 1964 and his son Ian took over and built the empire that followed. The current branch at 133-135 High Street isn't the original 1951 premises, but it's on the same street where it all began — serving standard Greggs fare of sausage rolls, steak bakes, sandwiches, doughnuts, and coffee quickly and cheaply from 6:30am, six days a week.