Warburtons now a £1bn sales blockbuster

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Winner: Warburtons

Celebrity sells. It’s a truth Warburtons has leant into more than any fmcg brand in its advertising, with the TV appearances of George Clooney, Robert De Niro, Peter Kay, Sylvester Stallone and the Muppets helping transform the Bolton bakery from a small, regional business 40 years ago to the UK’s largest British-owned grocery brand.

Last year’s TV and social advertising campaign, featuring Samuel L Jackson, was no exception: it reached 110 million consumers and has been “fundamental” to a number of milestones: sales topped £1bn for the first time last year; market share hit an all-time high of 21%; a record 800m loaves were rolled out, as Warburtons recorded the largest volume growth of Britain’s Biggest Brands [NIQ, 52 w/e 31 December 2024]. In a category suffering long-term declines, that’s no mean feat.

Its success is not just built on viral ads, however. Warburtons has relentlessly pursued excellence to improve the consistency of its products by ensuring the exact same flour and ingredients is used across all operating sites. It also launched a “softness improvement programme” to provide customers with better mouth feel.

As a result, recent quality scores were the highest in its history. Conversely, food safety complaints were the lowest ever at 2.1 per million units sold.

Nor will you find many retailers complaining about the Warburtons supply chain. It’s committed to over 99% order fulfilment, guaranteeing timely deliveries, minimised disruptions, and consistent stock availability to the 19,000 stores it delivers to each day. That’s thanks to an industry-leading manufacturing and logistics network.

Bread is a notoriously difficult category for innovation but Warburtons has spent over £400m in the last 10 years to grow its range to 70 products, notably moving beyond the usual formulaic plant bread variants, meeting shopper and retailer needs for specialist and premiumised products at scale. And, crucially, these continue to be a hit with shoppers: Warburtons sold 8m units of new products last year.

In 2024, Warburtons moved into snacking with a new single-serve waffle product that sold 700k units in six months in Tesco alone before rolling out to other retailers in March 2025.

It also launched two new protein products that have sold 3m units in the six months since launch, helped by the recruitment of brand ambassadors such as Mary Earps and Jimmy Anderson to boost awareness.

The first branded baker to launch a gluten-free range, in 2011, Warburtons has since grown into the UK’s number one gluten-free brand. The products can now also be found in Australia and Dubai. More recently, Warburtons launched gluten-free pittas, hoovering up 59% of the market share in the 11 months since launch.

It’s also recently gained accreditation as a Great Place to Work. Is it any surprise that all areas achieved higher average scores than the top 50 benchmark?