It's no secret that Britain loves a Greggs. Whether it's a coffee before work or a much-needed sausage roll at the motorway services, that blue logo is often a welcome sight.
No doubt it's the value-for-money that keeps people coming back, even more so as people feel the pinch at the moment. Greggs started 70 years ago as a single shop in Newcastle and has grown to having 2,000 stores across the UK, employing 25,000 people, reports the Mirror.
Greggs fans might be intrigued to know some of the secrets of its operations and now one insider has lifted the lid. There's a secret code used to help staff tell the difference between the various goods they're serving.
Jamie Dear, a former store manager, told the Mirror: "This is something I hadn't noticed when I was a shopper at Greggs before I started working there."
Every pasty has unique markings on top which staff need to learn so they can quickly and easily identify the product.
"One of the first things you have to do is learn the markings," explained Jamie. "And it can only really be done in a textbook style with a list and picture of what it should look like. It's like a new language.
"The corned beef has a zig zag line going across it, the sausage and bean has three horizontal slits, while the ham and cheese bake has a trim round the side with lines across. The cheese and onion bake has got giant Vs and the steak bake has three diagonal slits with a trim around the side."
There are also other secrets in Greggs, such as why you may sometimes come across cold products in stores.
"The reason Greggs can have such reasonable prices is they're not charged VAT if they're not keeping them warm. They're just baking them fresh," explained former store manager James Oldfield.
James also said the sandwiches are made an extremely fast pace, and '60 an hour was the standard', but the ex-employee said that he'd seen people making up to 90 an hour. At his peak, another ex-employee Jamie could make four baguettes in a minute.
It also boils down to where the stores are placed. Over the last few years they have made finding the perfect spot for a store as "an art form", using boot-on-the-ground research to work out where people are hanging around.
