Sainsburys bread bakery shopper

Source: Sainsbury’s

The Real Bread Campaign has claimed a victory over Sainsbury’s and Lidl dropping ‘freshly baked’ claims. 

Lidl has previously decribed its stores as selling “fresh bakery” items, while Sainsbury’s has previously used the phrase “freshly made every day”, though both supermarkets say any change was not the result of pressure from the campaign group. 

The Real Bread Campaign has also taken issue with Lidl signage saying “baking all day every day for you”.

The row is the latest development in a war being waged by the campaign against supermarket in-store bakery claims, which it argues are “misleading”.  

Between January and July this year, the campaign lodged complaints with trading standards about seven of the UK’s 10 largest supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, Lidl, Co-op, M&S and Waitrose  – over how they market their prepared in-store bakery lines.

“Lidl makes nothing fresh from scratch in any of its UK stores,” said the campaign this week as it claimed the discounter was the “latest” supermarket to change its marketing. 

“Instead, bread-type products are manufactured elsewhere, chilled or frozen, transported long distances and merely re-baked in store using ‘loaf tanning salons’.”

Lidl said it did not use the term ‘freshly baked’. However, it was using the phrase “fresh bakery” in marketing emails up to 2021, while its then GB CEO Christian Härtnagel said stores included “Lidl’s famous Bakery, offering freshly baked bread, biscuits and pastries, created by the discounter’s in-store bakers throughout the day”.

By last year, Lidl had changed its claim in marketing emails to “freshly baked in Kent”. 

Lidl did not provide a comment on when it stopped claiming products were freshly baked in store. It said trading standards had taken no issue with its marketing claims. 

The Real Bread Campaign said Sainbury’s had replaced “freshly made everyday” and “skilled bakers” signs with new ones saying “Loaves & Bloomers” in its recently refurbished store in Penge, south-east London.

Sainsbury's Witney 12

Source: Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s has been updating signage across its store estate, including in its instore bakeries

Sainsbury’s said signage had not been changed as a result of a trading standards complaint and did not provide further comment.

The campaign group, run by charity Sustain, has been battling for a decade for ‘real bread’ to be legally defined as being baked without chemical raising agents, processing aids or any other additives. 

Last year it claimed a victory over Lidl renaming a loaf from Sourdough Rye Crusty Bloomer to Crusty Wheat & Rye Bloomer.

“None of the UK’s 10 largest supermarket chains makes bread fresh from scratch in all of its stores,” the campaign claimed this week.

“Some make nothing from scratch in any of their stores. The retailers choose not to display this information, instead choosing to make marketing claims, which don’t always accurately represent where, when and how products were made.”

Campaign co-ordinator Chris Young said: “The government needs to better protect shoppers, and reduce the burden on underfunded trading standards departments, by introducing clear, undisputable legislation that prevents companies making these sorts of claims in the first place.

“People have the right to know when, where, how and with what bread and industrial dough products are made. They shouldn’t be left, or misled, to believe that a product prefabricated a long time ago in a factory far, far away was freshly made in store.”

In August, Morrisons said it would remove its in-store bakery signage after admitting its ‘made from scratch’ claim was “incorrect”.