RIP in-store bakeries

Last week, a trading standards officer told the Real Bread Campaign they would not be taking further action on our complaint amount Sainsbury’s ‘in-store bakery’ marketing. This was despite the company’s ‘freshly made every day’ claim being a load of…I'll leave you to fill in the blanks.

The truth is that no ‘in-store bakery’ products sold by Sainsbury's are crafted by skilled bakers somewhere round the back in any of their stores. They were all manufactured a long time ago, in factories far, far away.

The company is not alone. The situation in UK supermarkets is now that, unless the label on a specific 'bakery' product clearly states that it was made (not just baked, made) from scratch in store that day, it probably wasn't.

Facts

Eight of the UK’s ten largest supermarket chains now make no ‘bakery’ section products fresh from scratch in any of their stores. The other two chains only employ skilled bakers to make some products from scratch in some stores. As I have said many times before: good luck to anyone wanting to find out which products in which stores of which chains are made fresh from scratch on the day they are sold. 

Many of the loaves, rolls, baguettes etc. that you see are known in the trade as ‘bake-off’ products. They were baked at a low temperature to stop fermentation, set the crumb and create a crust somewhere else: some are even manufactured outside the UK. 

At a later date (products frozen for storage and transportation can have a use-by date 12 months or more) the prefabricated products are loaded by a store employee into what we call a loaf tanning salon, in which they are merely re-baked to a pre-set programme for a few minutes to brown the crust. Another category of products are referred to as ‘thaw-and-serve’. Again, these are manufactured elsewhere but all that happens in stores is that they are left to defrost before being put on display. 

When food is sold loose, or in unsealed packaging, what we see as a loophole in the law allows companies to choose not to display full ingredients lists, leaving shoppers in the dark.

Contrary to occasional derisive muttering from social media trolls, not everyone knows all of this, it does matter and there are people who care.

Fiction

On one hand supermarkets generally choose to withhold (or, at least, not openly declare) when, where, how and with what ‘in store bakery’ products were manufactured. In more than 17 years on the Campaign trail, I have yet to see a sign or label as honest and transparent as: ‘this boule was baked in Poland on DATE and rebaked in-store on DATE’ or ‘this doughnut was manufactured in Spain on DATE and defrosted in store on DATE’, accompanied by the full list of ingredients and additives.

Supermarkets then tend to choose to fill the vacuum (and large amounts of label / wall space) left by their omission of material facts with marketing claims. Ones we have seen include: ‘expertly baked in store’, ‘baking fresh from our ovens every day’, ‘freshly made every day’, ‘freshly baked bread’, 'freshly baked in store every day’, ‘baked here every day', ‘baked for you throughout the day’, ‘our fresh in store bakery’ and ‘always sold on the day they are baked’.

These reinforce, and are reinforced by, merchandising that involves wicker baskets, wooden (or wood effect) shelving, paper bags and so on. The retail theatre can extend to ovens made visible from the shop floor, beside which you might see staff members in bakers’ white coats and hats. Once chain has ‘your baker today is’ signs, while employees in another can ring a little brass bell that hangs below a ‘baking now’ sign. 

These visual cues make a clear distinction between the ‘in store bakery’ and the plastic-wrapped, additive-laden, industrial dough products sitting on metal shelves elsewhere in the store. Individually and collectively, they are likely to cause shoppers to make subconscious (or even conscious) associations with actual bakeries in which bread is genuinely made fresh from scratch every day by skilled, artisan bakers, without additives. None of this is accidental. As one chain confessed in a 2012 press release, the intention was: ‘creating a friendlier artisan feel’ and ‘the kind of atmosphere you’d find in an artisan bakery with wooden shelves.’

Many families in the UK are one or more generations beyond anyone having breadmaking knowledge to pass on, which (despite our efforts) still does not routinely happen in schools either. In combination with the above, it’s a recipe for some people being left – or perhaps (mis)led? – to believe the ‘freshly made in store today’ hype.

Winners and losers

Switching to ‘bake-off’, ‘thaw-and-serve’ and other prefabricated products is cheaper (and therefore more profitable for company directors and shareholders) than training and creating many hours of employment for skilled, knowledgeable bakers to make bread etc. fresh from scratch in stores. Management cut bakers’ shifts / pay, or make them redundant altogether, while corporate fat cats cream off the rewards. As well as benefiting from the ability to undercut small, local, independent businesses that do still employ skilled bakers, supermarkets often capitalise on pricing ‘in-store’ bakery products higher than some of the prepacked baked products they sell.

It’s not just people who suffer; there are also potential negative consequences for the planet. Unsurprisingly, baking a product, freezing it for storage, transporting it and then re-baking it can use around twice as much energy as baking it just once. Then there’s the issue of food waste. A rebaked product tends to stale much faster, increasing the potential for food waste in the home. Anyone who believes claims that supermarkets switching to prefabricated products reduces waste should look at evidence posted by Food Waste Inspector on Instagram.

Supermarkets and other retailers being more open and honest about when, where, how and with what baked products are manufactured will have no effect on people whose buying decisions are based on other priorities.  Nor will it have an effect on pricing. It might even lead to reductions: telling the whole truth and stripping away marketing guff could lead to people being less willing to pay premium prices, for example.

What needs to happen

In an October 2025 survey, 71% of respondents said they thought many supermarket ‘baked in store’ or ‘freshly baked’ claims were misleading. There is still work to be done, though. A January 2026 survey reported that 46% of respondents were concerned about ultra-processed food (UPF) and that 43% said they want to eat bread with as few additives as possible. 75% of respondents agreed with use that ingredients and additives should be listed for ‘bread’ sold loose / unwrapped.

'Isn't the trading standards there to protect us - and honest businesses - from inaccurate and misleading labelling and marketing,' you might ask. Tragically, consumer protection services, have become increasingly underfunded and overstretched. They are currently having to prioritise the likes of benzene-laced toy squishy dumplings and butter sticks, often forcing our complaints way down (and even off) their to-do lists. The government needs to step up by appropriately empowering and funding those vital services.

Fundamentally, as we have been saying since 2009, we need an Honest Crust Act! The updated and improved standards that we continue to lobby for include specific regulation and guidance on the use of ‘freshly baked’ and other common bakery marketing terms, rather than rely on individual trading standards officers’ opinions of what is and isn’t misleading.

You do you

Rather than call for a ban on loaf tanning salons or additive-laden industrial dough products, we work to help ensure that everyone has a realistic chance to choose Real Bread. Challenging incomplete and inaccurate labelling and marketing is part of our drive to help people be in a position to make better-informed choices.

We encourage everyone to make their own Real Bread. We also encourage everyone lucky enough to have a small, independent, community-focussed bakery in their neighbourhood to support that business and enjoy their lovingly-crafted Real Bread. At the same time, we recognise that not everybody has a realistic chance to choose Real Bread, which we work to address through our Real Bread For All initiative. 

We also understand and accept that everyone bases their choices on different factors, leading to some people buying and eating products that fall outside our definition of Real Bread. While we are questioning and critical of corporations, policies and practices that do not align with our aims, mission and values, we do not criticise people who take a different path from us in their everyday lives, for whatever reason they do so.

See also

• Tesco drops ‘expertly baked’ claim
• M&S loaf tanning salon update
• Aldi renames loaf after Real Bread Campaign complaint
• Defra continues to leave a void in consumer protection
• M&S relabelling thanks to Real Bread Campaign
• Morrisons promises to correct half-baked labelling and marketing