I reckon Gayle Tomlinson has let herself be suckered for the purposes of this story in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, passed along the counter by that notorious pie-lady, Margaret Marks:
Greggs still likes to use Geordie imagery in its PR, but it’s been a nation-wide company for the past thirty years and as far as I know has never attempted to introduce one region’s specialities into another, although it may help Tyneside sales to imply that stotty cake is different from a normal bap and that Greggs cares about it. As Greggs says on its website:
There are differences in customer demand for different products across divisions, for example the stottie bread cake is a core product for the North East division, whilst the Scotch Pie is only available in Greggs of Scotland. The divisional bakeries enable product development and production that will meet the customer demand in that particular division.
Their Belgian site isn’t up yet, but I can’t find anything even vaguely un-Belgian in the free breakfast with “coffee biscuits, coffee and chocolate milk” offered here or in the following product list, compiled from this job ad:
- “Sandwiches”:
- “Whole-wheat bread in triangular slices”
- “Crunchy baguettes”
- “Greggswich: a delicious round bun with sesame and poppy seeds”, the sesame and poppy seeds suggesting it’s not a stotty cake but a hamburger, not exactly a new concept in Flanders although the name–Greggswich–interestingly only seems to be used in Belgium
- “Warm snacks with various tasty fillings”, about which we need more details–again, the general concept is also a familiar one
- “Pizza”
- “Hot dog”
- “Fresh soup”
- “Delicious sweet snacks and pastries”
When someone, some day does undertake to market the British pie into northern Europe, they could do worse than take advice from Weebl, whose pie stories have always seemed to me slightly Belgian, in the nicest possible sense. Here is the pilot, and here is my favourite, his Seventh Seal parody.
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