GoKawiilOnce a Liverpool institution, Sayers has been driven out of its own city centre by Greggs. What went wrong?
An early memory: clutching a sausage roll in the Cherry Tree shopping centre on a summer's day in Liscard, waiting for my nan to buy an Echo from John Menzies. I can’t be ten years old yet, because that’s when WHSmith bought out and rebranded Menzies; also, the roll is massive in my hand, like a flaky baton of hot processed pork.
Although maybe that’s just because it’s from Sayers. The way people in Liverpool especially talk about a classic Sayers sausage roll, you’d think they were beef Wellington-sized pasties with enough steaming protein to nourish both football teams. The famous caff chain, founded in Old Swan in 1912, also sold pies, soups, pasties, bread, and cakes, with vanilla slices and strawberry tarts a particular favourite. Comfort food, in short — tasty and unpretentious.
Alas, in 2025, it’s Greggs – once just Sayers’ Newcastle equivalent – that is ubiquitous on British high streets and the subject of Netflix documentaries. With a turnover of £2 billion last year, it’s overtaken McDonald’s as the go-to breakfast fast-food. Go into Primark and you’ll find Greggs-branded clothing. God preserve us, there have even been Greggs-themed weddings.
Meanwhile, like Liscard’s retail sector, The Echo, and your humble writer, Sayers has gone into decline. (Bizarrely, John Menzies Plc is flying – literally, as it’s now an aviation company.) In 2006, 183 jobs were lost at Sayers’ central bakery on Lorenzo Drive in Norris Green, where the business had been based for 75 years. Two years later, it closed altogether when the parent company went into administration.
Workers at Sayers’ headquarters on Lorenzo Drive in Norris Green, 1988. Photo: X
What about the stores? First they partially rebranded as Poundbakery after a merger. Then they, too, all-but disappeared from the city centre. Now, unless you’re willing to travel out to Allerton Road or West Kirby, Sayers is little more than a spectre occasionally invoked by nostalgia pages on Facebook. Like the recent EFL Cup final, was this simply a case of Geordies doing it better?
Not according to Scouse respondents to The Post’s call out.
“Sayers' sausage rolls are head and shoulders above Greggs,” says Jez. “They've got a little bit of a kick to them.” “I do prefer it to Greggs,” says Louise. “Pasties and sausage rolls are far better.”
And this supremacy goes beyond mere pastry fillings.
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