A sliced white loaf for supermarkets and new sites in shopping centres are on Gail’s agenda for the year, according to managing director Nick Ayerst.
Speaking at MCA’s Food To Go Conference as part of a leaders panel earlier this month, Ayerst revealed there was NPD in the pipeline which will expand its reach in the supermarket bread aisles.
The MD described the product, which the business is aiming to launch later this year, as a “standard sliced white loaf” albeit one with a “clean deck” of ingredients.
“It’s fairly tough without all the preservatives,” he explained. “People expect a loaf of bread to sit for a week and not go mouldy, so finding ways to get the right sort of shelf life that people look for and still get that nutrition in there is the tricky part.”
This is an area of the market currently dominated by Jason’s Sourdough, which recently became Britain’s third biggest bread brand, with its sliced white Ciabattin boasting only four ingredients: wheat flour, water, salt, and fermented wheat flour.
The NPD builds on the existing retail proposition which sees the bakery sell Gail’s branded loaves via Waitrose and Ocado, with dedicated fixtures in certain Waitrose stores.
Once launched Ayerst believes the loaf “will have a marketplace across more of the supermarket brands, and that should help them bring that awareness to the wider business proposition”.
Estate expansion
Also on the agenda is further expansion of Gail’s estate which has grown by around 30 to 35 new openings over the past few years. The most recent openings include locations in Tooting Broadway and Archway in London which Ayerst said a few years ago probably “weren’t the sort of traditional locations that you may expect to see us”, adding that “both of them [are] trading well”.
“We see opportunities to grow into new areas,” Ayerst continued, pointing to another relatively recent opening which saw it venture into Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet Village in Wirral.
“During the course of 2026, we’ll definitely be opening in one or more shopping centres just to explore what that looks like for us. Different day parts, different missions, different audience,” Ayerst explained. “We need to make sure that we’re able to adapt and cope with those changes.”
The panel – which also included Joe & The Juice CEO Thomas Nørøxe, Taco Bell Europe general manager Ian Cranna, and Coco di Mama MD Sara McKennedy – highlighted the opportunity in the food to go market currently up for grabs as consumers demand quality products at affordable prices.
On this point, Ayerst said regardless of price point the food to go market is typically “a more affordable option” than other out of home operators and often have the benefit of being in convenient locations for people’s day-to-day routines.
“People are making a considered decision about how much they’re paying for things and weighing up the environment, the service level they’re getting, and the quality of ingredients,” he added.
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