Baker Greggs said annual profits jumped 41% as fresh coffee and calorie-conscious sandwiches helped boost sales growth to an eight year high.
The group, which runs 1,650 shops, said pre-tax profit reached £58.3 million in the 53 weeks to January 3, as it refocused its menu and refitted outlets. Sales lifted 5.5% to £804 million.
It added that its 4.5% like-for-like sales growth over the period was its strongest increase since 2007 as it introduced new lines such as its steak and cheese roll.
The improvement follows a 2013 drive by chief executive Roger Whiteside to focus on the food-on-the-go market, which accounts for 75% of customer visits, rather than traditional take-home business.
The group added the new financial year has begun strongly with like-for-like sales up 6.3% in the eight weeks to February 28.
The business said last year it made £1 million of coffee sales a week in the period leading up to Christmas after improving its blend in February.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article