Morrisons is to remove its in-store bakery signage after admitting its ‘made from scratch’ claim was “incorrect”.
The retailer claimed it had “advised all stores” to take the signs down after Real Bread Campaign submitted a trading standards complaint about them on 12 June.
West Yorkshire Joint Services responded to the Real Bread Campaign’s complaint this week, including the statement from Morrisons.
“We apologise that the signage you have seen that states our Best bread is ‘made from scratch’ is incorrect and we have advised all stores to take it down,” the statement read.
“Our core range of scratch-produced bread and rolls is complemented by a limited number of more specialised products, including our Best range, which require non-standard ingredients e.g. sour dough [sic], or extended production times, that make them very difficult to produce in store.”
Such products are often made by third parties and rebaked in stores. However, Real Bread Campaign argued that Morrisons was “failing to tell shoppers which ‘bakery’ products were manufactured elsewhere”.
It was also omitting to tell shoppers which products were frozen between manufacture and sale, plus which products were manufactured overseas, said Real Bread Campaign.
Plus, the retailer was using claims like ‘baked fresh daily’, ‘baked right here’ and ‘baked here every day’ to market these products, which was “compounding these omissions”, it added.
Morrisons certainly isn’t the only retailer to draw the ire of Real Bread Campaign over recent months. As of 4 July, it had made trading standards complaints about Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lidl, Co-op, M&S and Waitrose for engaging in “misleading” marketing practices in their bakery sections.
A Tesco spokesman said: “In some stores where we don’t have the space to bake everything from scratch, we work closely with our bakery suppliers who prepare dough for us that trained colleagues bake every day in store.
“The signage we use in each individual store reflects the different ways we prepare bread, and our approach has been agreed with our trading standards primary authority.”
The Grocer has approached the other retailers for comment.
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