Matt Raynor is pressured. The 53-year-old chair of Raynor Meals has not too long ago accepted a £1,200 signing-on bonus for sandwich makers; tonight he’ll work a six-hour choosing and packing shift on the firm’s Essex plant due to employees shortages.
“It’s been the worst two-and-a-half years of my life, with the disruption, the chaos,” he says. “We have been preventing with Brexit after which Covid hit us.”
Raynor’s household enterprise, based in 1988, makes 80,000 sandwiches a day for cafés, supermarkets, canteens and hospitals. As soon as a makeshift operation in his mother and father’ kitchen, its rise has mirrored the professionalisation of the UK’s sandwich business over three many years.
For the reason that Eighties, a big chunk of British sandwich making has moved from kitchens and sandwich bars to chilled, hyper-efficient factories, which produce all kinds of packaged sandwiches — from the humdrum cheese and pickle to novelty flavours involving jackfruit and plant proteins. The business’s fast progress was powered by rising incomes, extra ladies becoming a member of the workforce, low-cost labour from Europe and staff chasing comfort.
Now, after the pandemic dealt the business the worst blow in its fashionable historical past, it’s being reshaped by a mixture of labour shortages, souring financial situations and modifications in British working habits.
Earlier than Covid lockdowns briefly shuttered places of work in 2020, folks within the UK have been consuming £8bn value of sandwiches a yr. Kevin Moore, deputy chief govt of the UK’s largest sandwich maker Greencore, says packaged sandwiches had reached a so-called penetration of 84 per cent — which means 84 out of 100 folks purchased at the least one a yr, a fee exceeded solely by just a few staples like milk and occasional, in line with Kantar, a knowledge analytics firm.
However the rise of homeworking in the course of the pandemic appears to have pushed lasting modifications within the routines of the business’s most vital clients: workplace staff. The British Sandwich & Meals to Go Affiliation estimates that, two years on, enterprise continues to be 20 per cent beneath pre-pandemic ranges.
On the similar time, the sector is dealing with disruption to its provide of low-cost labour and components. Brexit closed the UK’s doorways to free motion of EU residents, which means manufacturing staff are scarce and their wages are quickly rising. Intense inflationary strain is including to the unpredictability of buying and provide chain hold-ups since Russia invaded Ukraine this yr.
“I’m involved for the entire business,” says Raynor.
Simply in time
Whereas the sandwich shouldn’t be about to fade from British culinary life, the business fears its pre-pandemic golden age, marked by low price and seemingly infinite selection, could by no means return.
When Raynor’s mother and father moved from working a restaurant to creating sandwiches 34 years in the past “there was no sandwich business”, he recollects. His father met the client for a bunch of Co-Op shops at a networking occasion, who stated they wanted a sandwich provider. The kitchen operation started.
“It took us 9 and a half hours to make 350 sandwiches . . . we needed to grill the bacon and boil the eggs, do every little thing from scratch,” Raynor says. “They have been stunning sandwiches,” he provides wistfully.
In the present day, making sandwiches is a precision enterprise requiring frenetic backstage exercise. At Pret A Manger, the sandwich chain that has grow to be synonymous with London commuting life over greater than three many years, sandwich-making begins in-store at 5am every day. Elsewhere, manufacturing traces work frantically throughout evenings and nights.
On the south London plant of Merely Lunch, a producer with 290 employees, making a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich requires 17 stations on the manufacturing line. The orders — between 400,000 and 450,000 of them every week — are available simply 48 hours earlier than the sandwiches have to be on cabinets.
Staff in protecting gear function in rooms the place the temperature hovers at round 2C, processing 25,000 loaves of bread every week and two tonnes of tomatoes. Fifteen individuals are devoted to food security. The power operates 20 hours a day, with the remaining 4 spent on cleansing. Hermann Dokoui, a shift supervisor on the plant, says the 9pm to 7am evening shift is the toughest “since you are all the time strolling round”, making ready for deliveries to go away the manufacturing facility.
The necessity for freshness means sandwiches can’t be made abroad. “The sandwich business has remodeled quick shelf-life, chilled distribution within the UK dramatically,” says Jim Winship, director on the BSA. “You could have manufacturing plus two days or three at most. Meaning they’ve obtained to get from the manufacturing facility, which could be within the Midlands, to the retail store, which could be in Inverness someplace, and promote it inside two days.”
Merely Lunch’s lettuce leaves are picked in Kent within the small hours, attain the manufacturing facility at 9am, cross by a sanitising chemical answer, spin in a large salad spinner and are inside sandwiches from midday. Ultrasonic blades minimize the bread. Completed sandwiches are weighed to test the protein allocation. Samples go to laboratories each day to test for bacterial contamination.
When a manufacturing line modifications from one product to a different, the process resembles a “Formulation One pit cease”, says Sam Web page, Merely Lunch managing director. “There may be a whole lot of technical information that goes right into a sandwich.”
That precision has been examined by a dwindling provide of labour since Brexit. Web page’s manufacturing facility has round 40 vacancies. One other headache is the sheer pace of inflation. This yr egg costs have risen by 30 per cent, mayonnaise by 80 per cent as vegetable oil costs spiked, and bread costs by 25 per cent, says Adam Newland, managing director at Raynor Meals. Now the headache is cheese, the place costs have risen 76 per cent in a yr to £6 a kilo.
“There are forecasts that will probably be going for £8 a kilo by year-end. Cheese continues to be extremely risky,” Newland stated. Regardless of some commodity costs going into reverse, “nothing has eased for us,” he says.
Ingredient shortages attributable to provide chain disruption are forcing producers to adapt continually, says Winship. Most have minimize their ranges to streamline manufacturing. Greencore lowered its variety of merchandise by one-quarter after the onset of Covid-19 and it stays a couple of fifth beneath pre-pandemic ranges. Merely Lunch minimize its providing from 150 objects to 100.
Authorities assist enabled most sandwich makers to outlive the pandemic, however Southall-based Adelie Meals entered administration in 2020 with the lack of 2,000 jobs. Now Winship estimates the business is working at about 80 per cent of pre-pandemic gross sales, or £6.4bn a yr.
He had hoped for a full bounceback in 2022, however after the onset of fast inflation this yr, he’s not so positive.
Comply with the skyscraper
The success of the British sandwich business over the previous 4 many years belies each the precariousness of its enterprise mannequin and the depth of the competitors between producers. Margins are inevitably tight when pace and comfort are king.
Marks and Spencer launched its first packaged sandwich — salmon and tomato — in 1980. Pret A Manger was based in its present kind in 1986. Greencore emerged from the 1991 privatisation of Irish Sugar.
The broader nationwide local weather favoured sandwiches. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s labour reforms of the Eighties supplied sandwich makers with “comparatively low-paid staff”, says David Edgerton, professor of recent British historical past at King’s Faculty London. The white-collar ethos grew to become one in every of “folks working more durable, with not a lot time”.
As meals author Bee Wilson notes in her guide Sandwich: A International Historical past: “No dish has a stronger affiliation with the world of labor.” For workers and not using a subsidised office canteen, sandwiches grew to become an affordable, environment friendly means of outsourcing lunch. “As an alternative of communal consuming, it [became] a solitary exercise,” says Edgerton.
In the present day, in actual phrases, common family disposable earnings is double that of 1980, says Jon Boys, economist on the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Growth. “Additional earnings means extra stuff. Duties like making sandwiches have switched from dwelling manufacturing to the market economic system — as have many different issues over time: childcare, cleansing, procuring.”
Oriel Sullivan, professor of sociology of gender at College Faculty London, says the Eighties have been when “feminine full-time employment charges actually began to rise quickly. There have been fewer ladies at dwelling to make sandwiches for others, they usually have been too busy to make them for themselves.”
The ready-made sandwich grew to become emblematic of the period’s financial shifts. Boys says: “What are you shopping for? A sandwich, sure, however actually you might be shopping for time, comfort, consistency and maybe selection too.” The model that summed up that change was Pret A Manger, whose earlier chief govt’s motto was to “comply with the skyscraper”.
With few boundaries to entry for producers, the market quickly grew to become intensely aggressive. “Retailers have moved their contracts round and saved margins low,” says Andy Searle, managing director at consultancy AlixPartners.
A prepared provide of low-cost and pliable labour enabled that technique. After the EU expanded in 2004, many vacancies were filled by jap Europeans who have been keen to work lengthy hours for decrease pay. By 2017, EU nationals accounted for greater than one-third of the meals business workforce, in line with the Meals and Drink Federation. They have been disproportionately engaged on manufacturing traces, say business executives.
When it got here, Brexit was accompanied by a suggestion of long-term settlement for present European residents. However a points-based immigration regime launched from 2021 stopped the free stream of low-paid labour, whereas the Covid pandemic prompted an estimated 1.3m abroad staff to go dwelling.
That led to an intensive recruitment drive. Pret, Greggs and different takeaway chains have suffered employees shortages after making redundancies or furloughing staff throughout lockdowns. Pret, which elevated headcount by 28 per cent between January and April this yr, has raised wages twice since September. Sandwich executives say Amazon warehouses can simply poach their staff.
With post-Brexit immigration coverage formed round a “high-wage economic system”, ministers have pushed meals producers to automate slightly than make use of low-paid staff. However it’s a main problem to exchange the dexterity of human fingers when dealing with irregular components similar to lettuce.
Merely Lunch is investing £25,000 in a “depositor” to drop egg mayonnaise or the same combine on to bread. One other robotic drops the ultimate slice of bread to “lid” a sandwich. Greencore already makes use of each gadgets, together with a butter spreader.
Raynor Meals has a robotics programme with Dutch group IRS, nevertheless it has but to juggle a number of components — a process Raynor compares with Tetris, the online game. His firm has been battling vacancies and employees turnover regardless of elevating entry-level wages by 15 per cent in a yr and ramping up bonuses. Of 1 group of 17 new recruits, 4 dropped out inside two days.
“We’re asking folks to do a bodily job in a chilly room with none home windows, for lengthy intervals of time,” he says, including wryly: “The glamour of the business shouldn’t be on the coal face.”
Finish of a budget meals period
The better problem could also be getting customers to return to their pre-pandemic lunching habits. Meals perks are one method to entice employees again into the workplace however, for a lot of, a sandwich won’t minimize it, says Julie Ennis, chief govt of UK and Eire company companies at caterer Sodexo: “Individuals are on the lookout for one thing completely different . . . Individuals aren’t coming into the workplace for a ham sandwich,” she says.
Meals supply apps have elevated customers’ expectations of selection. Matt Ephgrave, managing director at Simply Eat for Enterprise, says the previous six months have prompted “unprecedented demand” for meals deliveries to places of work. “We’re seeing a large shift in the direction of wholesome choices — Japanese, Poke bowls and salads,” he says.
And in current months, a few of the main financial tendencies that helped gasoline the sandwich growth have gone into reverse. The Financial institution of England has warned of the worst squeeze on disposable incomes in 30 years. The ensuing price of residing disaster is anticipated to have far-reaching results on British existence.
Some producers are dealing with the worth strain by quietly chopping portion sizes, says Andrew Walker, former chief govt of sandwich chain Eat. Raynor has pushed up costs for its clients by as a lot as 1 / 4.
“The proof is that the period of low-cost meals is over,” says Tim Lang, emeritus professor of meals coverage at Metropolis College. For Lang, sandwich manufacture is a carbon-intensive business, over-reliant on low-cost labour. “You’ve obtained a plastic-wrapped sandwich made in a single day in a manufacturing facility up the A1 and pushed down in chilly retailer, oil-guzzling vehicles to ship to place in a BP M&S storage. Is it wise? It’s bonkers,” he says.
Walker believes the heyday of the standard triangle sandwich is over, however for a unique purpose. He argues it’s going to decline as customers select salads, wraps and different choices which might be seen as more healthy.
Others are extra optimistic. “The core of this nation is run by . . . blue-collar staff in manufacturing. They want a sandwich on the go, they don’t have time to have dinner they usually love what they love,” says Dan Silverston, managing director of The Soho Sandwich Co.
Some distant staff could also be satisfied to purchase their packaged sandwiches near dwelling. Gross sales in Pret’s suburban London outlets are actually 18 per cent greater than pre-Covid ranges whereas Metropolis shops’ gross sales are nonetheless round 17 per cent decrease, Bloomberg knowledge present. The motto of its present chief govt, Pano Christou, is “take Pret to the folks”. However, Xiaowei Xu, senior analysis economist on the Institute for Fiscal Research, expects this pattern will make sandwiches costlier “as a result of locations the place folks dwell are much less dense than locations the place they work”.
As for Raynor, he argues the sandwich will probably be “dragged kicking and screaming again to pre-Covid ranges of selection, however that will probably be massively stymied by inflation . . . It’s going to take time and clients must settle for that the worth for a sandwich won’t be what it was two years in the past.
“Nothing else goes to face nonetheless,” he says, “so why would the sandwich?”
