James Kirkup James Kirkup

How Greggs can save capitalism

Greggs’ sausage rolls are part of the national conversation. The smart shift to offer a vegan variant caught the mood and bragging about your love of Greggs is an easy way for politicos to signal their down-with-the-proles ordinariness.

In fact, political types should be paying more attention to the company behind the sausage rolls, because it might just be the future (and saviour) of capitalism.

Greggs is a public company, part of the FTSE 250 and a good bet for the FTSE 100 one day. That and it treats people well.

The latest sign of this is the £300 bonus Greggs is paying to staff, reflecting those profits and a £35million dividend to shareholders. That bonus is on top of the firm’s existing profit share scheme. It’s also worth noting that those “shareholders” include quite a lot of staff, who are offered shares at a discounted rate.

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