Greggs the food retailer has announced to reopen some of its outlets despite the coronavirus lockdown.

Greggs is a bakery chain that has more than 2,050 shops. They’ve announced to reopen 20 of their shops around the Newcastle area from Monday 4 May as part of a “controlled trial”, with more to follow.

When the lockdown began, Greggs had to shut down temporarily but they’ve decided to reopen some shops. But this isn’t the only food industry that decided to open, earlier this month, Burger King, KFC, and Pret A Manger reopened certain restaurants, mainly for delivery only.

This trial was announced by Greggs chief executive Roger Whiteside to last for atleast two weeks, and would involve limited product range and shorter trading hours
In a letter to staff, he said that from 8 June, he hoped to open about 700 stores, including 150 franchise shops.

He hopes to be able to open all the shops by 1 July, when the government’s job retention scheme is due to end.
, Mr Whiteside did say that timing could change, depending on future government announcements

“We expect it will only be possible to open this many shops if the government has taken a first step in relaxing the lockdown, which could be to open the schools,” he added.

Customer and staff well being is part of their top priorities as a Greggs spokeswoman said: “We want to play our part in getting the nation back up and running again, so we are planning to conduct a limited trial with volunteers to explore how we can reopen our shops with new measures in place that keep our colleagues and customers as safe as we can when we reopen at scale.”