A new discount Greggs has opened in Oldham selling sandwiches and boxes of donuts and yum yums for just 55p.
As one of the high street bakery’s new Greggs Outlets stores, it is offering Oldham locals a saving of more than 50% on baked goodies – all by taking food that hasn’t been sold in its other stores and reselling it at a hefty discount.
Designed to provide ‘affordable food in areas of social deprivation’, a share of profits from the new store is also being given to local community organisations such as soup kitchens and food banks.
Inside, unlike a Greggs bakery there is no hot food counter. Instead, sweet and savoury treats like meat and vegan sausage rolls, packs of ‘bakes’, sandwiches and baguettes are lined up on shelves alongside boxes of yum yums and donuts.
Depending on what you choose to buy. customers can save over 70% on what they’d paid in a typical high street Greggs bakery store.
Image: Greggs
Image: Greggs
In the new Greggs Outlet, recently opened on Henshaw Street opposite Oldham’s Tommyfield Market, customers can buy meat and vegan sausage rolls in packs of four for just £1.55 – offering a saving of 57%.
Packs of two ‘bakes’ – chicken, steak, vegetable, cheese and onion, or sausage, bean and cheese melt – cost £1.25, whilst a regular Greggs offers one ‘bake’ for £1.80 or £1.90 depending on its filling.
As for sandwiches, if you pick the right filling you could save as much as 74%. Baguettes and rolls are priced at £1.05, whilst sandwiches are just 55p. Over at the traditional Greggs, meanwhile, you could pay as much as £3.35 for a baguette and £2.10 for a sandwich.
And in terms of sweet treats, in a regular Greggs store a packet of two yum yums will set you back £1.30 but in the Outlet you can get them for 55p. Packets of four donuts here are priced the same, offering one of the largest Outlet savings with a 78% discount.
Within two years, the company plans to have opened 50 Greggs Outlets across the country in areas hit hardest by the cost of living crisis.
The key to getting these savings, we understand, is to turn up early. The Greggs Outlet store is only stocked once a day, and once it runs out there won’t be any more until the following morning.
Featured image – Greggs
Eats
Inside Soots, the tiny new pasta restaurant in the Northern Quarter
Daisy Jackson
There’s another success story coming out of Altrincham Market – pasta kitchen Soots has gone and opened its very own restaurant in the Northern Quarter.
Owners and co-founders Ellie Proudfoot and Ruth Duarte have taken the leap to their very own bricks and mortar site on Tib Street, where they can serve up their handmade fresh pasta in their own restaurant space.
Named after their cocker spaniel Soots, the restaurant opens officially tomorrow.
The pair had hoped that Altrincham Market would be a launchpad to them eventually opening their first restaurant – and it’s worked brilliantly.
Inside Soots, it’s a cosy space with amazing green arches along the walls and a huge window that opens out onto this iconic Northern Quarter street.
Soots will again have a fully plant-based menu, broken down into snacks, small plates, pasta and puddings.
Everything is plant-basedEverything is plant-basedThe menu at SootsFresh, handmade pastaSmall plates
Expect heritage tomatoes with stracciatella and basil oil, butternut squash and chilli arancini, and a beautiful dish of marinated beetroot.
As for the pasta, there’ll be rigatoni with browned butter and confit tomatoes, sundried tomato-filled girella, and a lovely basil pesto spaghetti (a firm favourite from their Altrincham Market days).
And it wouldn’t be a pasta kitchen without a tiramisu on the dessert menu, along with lemon and olive oil ice cream, and white chocolate mousse.
Soots Pasta has been the first solo venture for Ellie, who used to work as a private chef as well as at restaurants around the region.
She’s taken her background – which includes culinary school in France – to create this modern European menu that takes inspiration from Italy.
What’s not immediately obvious, on reading the menu or eating it, is that everything on the Soots Pasta menu is entirely vegan – and they have gluten-free pasta available on request.
Soots Pasta is on Tib Street and officially opens on Saturday 9 Augst.
A mobile Manc cocktail bar is rolling into a thriving new Greater Mancheser neighbourhood
Danny Jones
Greater Manchester has plenty of up-and-coming areas both here in the city centre and out in the boroughs, and one of those – Middlewood Locks over in Salford – is about to be treated to its own mobile cocktail bar.
You’ve got to love a Manc-born and bred independent business.
The canalside New Makers Yards apartments on Middlewood Locks are some of the most desirable new homes and flats you’ll find on the outskirts of the city, but with their on-site Seven Brothers pub sadly closing earlier this year, it is lacking one key thing: somewhere to drink.
However, with Cocktail Cartel MCR rolling into town for National Rum Day, residents can get a taste of, hopefully, what’s more to come.
Cocktail Cartel is a brand new, completely independent mobile bar that’s already starting to take the events industry by storm.
Serving unique and innovative creations (including plenty involving Captain Jack’s go-to tipple), they’ll be slinging cocktails to the New Makers Yards natives along the stunning and ever-thriving Middlewood Locks this month.
Created by Katie and Erik, who have been working in Manchester’s hospitality scene for nearly 20 years combined, these two have a passion for supporting fellow local indies and bringing amazing drinks to the table wherever the opportunity presents itself.
From their ‘Grown Up Coke Float’, which has all the punch of a classic Long Island Iced Tea only with a scoop of toffee ice cream, chocolate sauce and sprinkles thrown in there, to a Pedro Pascal-inspired tequila numbers (yes, really), they have a lot of fun behind that bar.
Better still, most of their spirits are coming from local legends, Spirit of Manchester, and for this particular upcoming event, it wouldn’t be right to host National Rum Day in 0161’s second city without a gorgeous bit of Salford Rum.
But it doesn’t stop at just cocktails; the Cartel will also be pouring pints from nearby Track Brewery among various other regional favourites.
Once again, they’ll be popping up at New Makers Yard on Saturday, 16 August from noon onwards, promising rum, cocktails, beer, wine, cider and softies – so let’s just hope we get plenty of sun for it.
Keep an eye on their socials for how you might be able to grab some freebies also…
If you visited the most recent edition of Middlewood Locks Fest, you know this place is buzzing when the weather hits just right and the drinks are flowing. See you there.
Georgina Pellant -
25th May 2023 
