Greggs provide healthy breakfasts for primary school children in deprived areas

The Greggs Breakfast Clubs is a fantastic scheme that provides over 7,000 primary school children with a healthy, free breakfast each day, in significantly deprived parts of the UK.

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It’s a luxury we could never have afforded, but gives the children a settled start to a day. We’ve found the children are much more alert, less fidgety and have more energy.

About the Breakfast Clubs 

With over 150 breakfast clubs in primary schools across the UK, Greggs provides funding for all the food, including cereal, milk and toast, and all the equipment, including toasters, bowls, cutlery and extras such as board games.  Greggs bread is also given to each school free of charge from the local Greggs shop.   

The Greggs Breakfast Club model is a unique, simple, volunteer-based scheme which is extremely cost effective by using parent and grandparent volunteers from the school community to serve the food and run the clubs.  The volunteers are the vital element critical to the success of the clubs, as the use of volunteers rather than paid staff means that every £1 contributed goes directly to helping feed the children. 

Why the Clubs are needed 

Poor nutrition affects pupils’ concentration and their ability to learn, and independent research commissioned by Greggs shows the positive impacts of the Breakfast Clubs on concentration, attendance, classroom performance and social skills.  The Greggs breakfast club scheme prioritises schools in the most disadvantaged areas, where at least 50% of the pupils qualify for free school meals.  

Jean Orridge, Headteacher of High Clarence Primary School in Middlesbrough praised the Breakfast Club in her school saying it “is brilliant because it’s a luxury we could never have afforded, but gives the children a settled start to a day. We’ve found the children are much more alert, less fidgety and have more energy.”

How the Clubs started

Greggs was established in the 1930s as a local bakers and is now is the largest bakery retailer in the UK with over 1,450 shops and ten regional bakeries.   The Breakfast Club scheme was born out of a Business in the Community Seeing is Believing visit in 1999, to an established breakfast club at West Walker Primary School in Newcastle upon Tyne.  Here, former Group Managing Director, Sir Michael Darrington, saw the positive effects the breakfast club was having on the pupils and the local community and decided to offer Greggs support.

In 2010, Greggs has increased the number of Breakfast Clubs by 30%, reaching a target of 150 clubs, and now donates £225,000 each year to the scheme.  More clubs are lined up to open in partnership with other organisations including RBS and the CBI and Middlesbrough Council , thanks to the support of Business in the Community.   In 2010, the Greggs Breakfast Clubs received the Gold Award at the Food & Drink Federation’s Community Partnership Awards, in the Health & Wellbeing category.

Greggs Chief Executive Ken McMeikan believes there is the potential to help many more children in deprived areas across the UK, by rolling out the Greggs Breakfast Club model in partnership with other companies who might be willing to help.

Impact of the scheme

• Over ten years on, the Breakfast Clubs now feed over 7,000 children each day in deprived areas
• There are over 150 primary schools across the UK with a Greggs Breakfast Club
• Research undertaken by Durham University has shown that attendance, punctuality, concentration and social skills have dramatically improved as a result of Greggs Breakfast Clubs.