M&S loaf tanning salon update

Concluding a case that lasted two years, on 24 June 2026, a trading standards officer at London Borough of Tower Hamlets (Sustain’s / the Real Bread Campaign’s local authority) advised:

'Birmingham City Council’s stance is that M&S are baking products instore and therefore it the marketing is compliant. They are part baked before arrival to the store, but that to us that doesn’t reflect unfair marketing, they are still baking in store.’

The officer concluded: ‘LBTH is in agreement with this assertion and has taken no further action in respect to this. Case closed.’

Real Bread Campaign coordinator Chris Young said:

‘We are frustrated and disappointed that the trading standards service has chosen not to uphold our complaint. M&S marketing strongly implies that its "bakery" section products are freshly made in-store on the day they are sold. We believe this is a form of extended passing off and in breach of consumer protection legislation, especially as the company fails to communicate the truth of when, where and how products were actually manufactured.’

He added: 'Would a restaurant that bought in frozen ready meals, then merely bunged them in a microwave for a few minutes, get away with marketing like this?'

This isn’t just baking, it’s rebaking

On 25 June 2024, the Real Bread Campaign complained to Birmingham City Council, Marks & Spencer's Primary Authority for trading standards, that the chain marketed ‘The Bakery’ using claims including: ‘oven baked in store today’, ‘baking now’, ‘always sold on the day they are baked’.

This is despite:

• all M&S ‘The Bakery’ section products being manufactured off-site (some outside the UK) rather than supporting jobs for skilled bakers in the communities where the products are sold.
• prefabricated products being frozen for storage and transportation with a use by date of up to 12 months after manufacture
• all ‘bread’ products being re-baked in-store, a process that uses around twice as much energy as baking once and promotes faster staling, increasing the likelihood of food waste

Birmingham later redirected the complaint to LBTH.

Not just M&S

Eight of the UK’s ten largest supermarket chains make no 'bakery' section items in any stores. The remaining two only make some products from scratch in some stores. As Chris Young says: 'good luck to anyone wanting to find out which products in which stores!'

Prefabricated, then frozen, bread-type products are merely rebaked on site in what the Real Bread Campaign calls loaf tanning salons. Some products simply arrive from distant factories, then are left to defrost before being put on display. Not all products are manufactured in the UK.

'Bake-off' and 'thaw-and-serve' systems are fundamentally different to skilled bakers being employed in store to make products fresh from scratch on the day they are sold. An argument that those more profitable systems reduce waste in store are challenged by evidence frequently presented by Food Waste Inspector on Instagram.

Fully-informative labelling and honest marketing should not lead to price rises and could help to slow them down. Whether or not intentional, misleading people by omission and / or with factual inaccuracy can help convince them to part with their money and even to pay more. Could being more accurate and truthful have the opposite effect?

See also: More news about M&S