The great Scouse pasty war

An early memory: clutching a sausage roll in the Cherry Tree shopping centre on a summer's day in Liscard, waiting for my nan to buy an Echo from John Menzies. I can’t be ten years old yet, because that’s when WHSmith bought out and rebranded Menzies; also, the roll is massive in my hand, like a flaky baton of hot processed pork.

Although maybe that’s just because it’s from Sayers. The way people in Liverpool especially talk about a classic Sayers sausage roll, you’d think they were beef Wellington-sized pasties with enough steaming protein to nourish both football teams. The famous caff chain, founded in Old Swan in 1912, also sold pies, soups, pasties, bread, and cakes, with vanilla slices and strawberry tarts a particular favourite. Comfort food, in short — tasty and unpretentious.

Alas, in 2025, it’s Greggs – once just Sayers’ Newcastle equivalent – that is ubiquitous on British high streets and the subject of Netflix documentaries. With a turnover of £2 billion last year, it’s overtaken McDonald’s as the go-to breakfast fast-food. Go into Primark and you’ll find Greggs-branded clothing. God preserve us, there have even been Greggs-themed weddings.

Meanwhile, like Liscard’s retail sector, The Echo, and your humble writer, Sayers has gone into decline. (Bizarrely, John Menzies Plc is flying – literally, as it’s now an aviation company.) In 2006, 183 jobs were lost at Sayers’ central bakery on Lorenzo Drive in Norris Green, where the business had been based for 75 years. Two years later, it closed altogether when the parent company went into administration.

What about the stores? First they partially rebranded as Poundbakery after a merger. Then they, too, all-but disappeared from the city centre. Now, unless you’re willing to travel out to Allerton Road or West Kirby, Sayers is little more than a spectre occasionally invoked by nostalgia pages on Facebook. Like the recent EFL Cup final, was this simply a case of Geordies doing it better?

Not according to Scouse respondents to The Post’s call out.

“Sayers' sausage rolls are head and shoulders above Greggs,” says Jez. “They've got a little bit of a kick to them.” “I do prefer it to Greggs,” says Louise. “Pasties and sausage rolls are far better.”

And this supremacy goes beyond mere pastry fillings.

“It was superior to Greggs because the counters were heated,” says Clare, who also considers hipster cafés and artisan bakeries a step down from the Sayers ideal: “Give me a dinky cake any day over this tomfoolery we have now!”

I have nothing against Greggs. In fact, a confession: for years, my morning walk to work went past not one but two Greggs stores, making it doubly hard to resist their then-£2 breakfast roll. While I indulged in Geordie delights, our local hero struggled.

But why wasn’t Sayers the Scouse Greggs? Why isn’t there now a Sayers app, loyalty scheme, or vast, well-greased viral marketing campaigns to rival its North East counterpart? Why isn’t it the Newcastle Echo, or whatever, running pieces titled “Who remembers Greggs?” while American fast-food goliaths sweat over dinky cakes and cheese and onion pasties? Where did Sayers go wrong?

“Cost cut themselves to death,” says Ian. “[The] pasties were empty in the end.” “We still have a Sayers in Belle Vale, but it's small,” says Louise. “Years ago, you used to get a proper plate of gravy and chips. Now it's only a bowl and two chips max.”

Ian and Louise may well be right. But empty pasties and measly chips sound like symptoms rather than a cause. I think we need to go deeper, deeper than the deepest meat and potato pie, until we are a swim in hot, delicious facts and thick, carby truths.

Although Sayers is by some way the elder of the two brands, they share a similar history. Just as John Gregg founded a family bakery in 1939, selling yeast and eggs by pushbike before opening the first shop on Gosforth high street in 1951, the first Sayers kitchen was started in a basement on Prescot Road in 1912 by Fred and Lylian Sayer. Later, the bakery would move to a larger site on Aintree Road, then a factory on Lorenzo Drive in Norris Green in 1931.

Irene, who joined in 1964 at age 16, describes what it was like to work there. "It was very much a family-orientated place," she tells me over the phone. "Most of the people that were there on the factory knew each other, or were families that came and stayed there a long time." She describes the personnel manager Mr Wynn as a kindly man who looked after his staff. Workers would be taken on trips to Blackpool paid for by the company and rewarded with long-term service bonuses. "We worked hard, and they were strict – on hygiene especially, because we were making food – but I never felt intimidated or bullied," Irene says.

Irene's aunt, Kathleen, also worked for Sayers, joining in 1953 aged 15. At 21, she fell seriously ill – "given up for dead", as Irene describes her – and was out of work for two years. When she returned, Kathleen was called into Mr Wynn's office. "She thought she was going to be sacked," Irene explains. "Instead, Mr Wynn gave her a cheque for £10 – a lot of money in those days." Kathleen worked for Sayers for another five years, and when she got married, Sayers provided her wedding cake.

Over in Newcastle, Greggs also stayed a family business. The same year Irene was starting work on Lorenzo Drive, John Gregg died, leaving the business to his sons Ian and Colin. But Ian, especially, had big ideas. According to his book, Bread: The Story of Greggs, while studying at Cambridge he became influenced by the Pareto principle, based upon an Italian polymath’s observation that 80% of the land in Italy belonged to 20% of the population: therefore, in any field, 80% of the effect can be achieved with 20% of the effort. Ian Gregg began installing small ovens in each Greggs shop but moving most of the heavy baking off site. This made Greggs outlets relatively small, nimble and efficient – they could open up pretty much anywhere.

The first real divergence between the two bakery brands came in the Seventies. Greggs began moving beyond Tyneside, buying out Rutherglen in Glasgow and Thurston’s in Leeds. By 1977, when Sayers was bought by United Biscuits, Greggs had already begun its incursion into the North West, buying up Price’s in Manchester a year earlier. No longer a family business, Sayers became one brand among many; Greggs remained master of its fate.

In 1990, Sayers was bought again, this time by Warburtons. Greggs, meanwhile, was peckish again. In 1994, it acquired the Bakers Oven chain from Allied Bakeries.

This was a decisive move. Ten years earlier, Bakers Oven had bought out Carrick’s, an early competitor of Greggs in Newcastle. But as most Bakers Oven outlets were in the south of England, in one fell swoop, Greggs had not only consolidated its hold over Tyneside but also crossed the North/South Rubicon. Greggs' managing director at the time said the audacious purchase had provided ''a unique opportunity for Greggs to expand in its key target areas and to extend its operations into in-store bakeries and seated catering.''

By the end of the 1990s, Greggs had bought out Midlands chain Braggs. Meanwhile, Sayers had been sold again: to Lyndale Foods, the same parent company that would go into administration in 2008. For Greggs, that was just the beginning of its Caesarist ambition. The same year Sayers’ owners went under, Greggs rebranded other chains it had gradually acquired, such as Bakers Oven, as “Greggs”. The stage was set for national domination.