Online outrage sells sausage rolls

Vegan product is going down a treat in UK — helped along by a little old-school grumbling on Twitter

Think of British food and there’s a good chance fish and chips are on the list. While that may be a Friday family favourite, the sausage roll remains the go-to lunch snack for frugal students and blue-collar workers. The problem is, the pastry and sausagemeat concoction is definitely off limits for vegans.

It now looks as though the no-frills food chain Greggs, ubiquitous in UK towns and transport hubs, has found a secret marketing ingredient for both carnivores and herbivores — a sprinkle of social media. The company introduced a vegan sausage roll in January and the online controversy turned its plant-based alternative into a hot seller.

“More and more people are choosing to eat less meat and more vegetable-based things,” says chief executive Roger Whiteside. “That’s the trend we were looking to appeal to, and if we can make it vegan, then the pure vegans are also prepared to come and shop.”

Another reason for its success was the social media campaign that turned viral. Greggs had sent the vegan rolls to “opinion formers” in a sleek box more like an iPhone package than a fast-food container. That whetted the appetite of Vice journalist Hannah Ewens. She shared her eating experience in a series of photos published on the magazine’s website.

But what really pushed the product viral was an outburst from the unabashed Piers Morgan, a former tabloid editor and UK breakfast TV host, when he tweeted to his 6.5 million followers: “Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage, you PC-ravaged clowns.”

How did the company respond? “Oh hello Piers, we’ve been expecting you.”

Greggs got the publicity it desired because of the fun attitude to marketing, showing it is a brave and modern brand, says British publicist Mark Borkowski.

“In a very noisy world where it’s very difficult to raise your head above the parapet, to extend the story, to keep it running as your main marketing initiative, you need noise,” Borkowski says. “Piers Morgan gave that sort of noise.”

The company timed the launch perfectly, Borkowski says, pointing to the post-Christmas focus on New Year’s diet, fitness and health resolutions. It was a huge success: the chain of 1850 shops last month said it had an “exceptionally strong start” to the year, thanks to the buzz around the vegan roll.

Greggs first came up with the concept about two years ago, Whiteside says. But it needed to come up with a vegan product — including the puff pastry shell — that would also attract meat eaters, leading the chain to team up with meat-substitute maker Quorn Foods.

“Probably the most challenging thing was how to get the pastry to be nice when you weren’t allowed to use things like egg glaze,” Whiteside say.

In the end, they took the glaze out, and a lot of customers liked it anyway. “It’s drier basically because it doesn’t have the glaze on it, so therefore it’s more a matte finish rather than a gloss finish.”

While Whiteside won’t say exactly how many vegan rolls have been sold, he told journalists it’s the fastestselling new product since he became chief executive in February 2013. In January, the company said it was selling 1.5 million traditional sausage rolls a week.

The vegan roll is “a very strong seller,” he says. “People like it and they’re buying it more than once, which obviously is very encouraging.”

Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage, you PC-ravaged clowns. Piers Morgan