Sandwiches market - a slice of the action

The Guardian on Friday featured an independent report on the sandwich market served as a “Get up and go” supplement to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the humble sandwich and the start of British Sandwich Week. It would make useful stimulus material for a low-budget research activity for a BUSS1 start-up.

The commercial sandwich market in the UK employs 330,000 people, more than the number working in agriculture and the market has grown by 6% in the last year alone. Market research analysts Mintel suggest that the sandwich is the lunch option of choice for 75% of people. The mainstream packaged sandwich was introduced by M&S over 30 years ago as a trial into five of their stores. Today the retail sandwich market is worth £6bn and we buy three billion sandwiches a year.

Subway is the biggest chain in the UK with 1,432 stores. Subway is ahead of Tesco and M&S in terms of value of sandwich sales, but Tesco sells the most in terms of volume. Whilst many independent sandwich outlets make sandwiches on the premises, Greencore has four UK factories making 45,000 deliveries a week to convenience stores alone, totalling 320 million sandwiches per year. Innovation in packaging and sandwich content are seen as some of the drivers of past growth, with the economic climate putting pressure on lunchtime behaviours at present. If you were thinking about a SWOT analysis on the market for a starter activity, the recent proposal by the government to impose VAT on hot snacks is seen as a concern to the industry.

For a definition of what is a sandwich, the British Sandwich Association (BSA) provides their interpretation as any form of bread with a filling, generally assembled cold - to include traditional wedge sandwiches, as well as filled rolls, baguettes, pitta, bloomers, wraps, bagels and the like, but not burgers and other products assembled and consumed hot. Hot eating sandwiches are also included. The BSA state that Britain’s favourite sandwich is chicken salad, followed by prawn mayonnaise.

If you cannot access a paper copy of the supplement, you can access the full report here and if you want to role play the sandwich-making entrepreneur, you will probably want to dive headlong into the BSA website I am partial to the occasional infographic, so here is one making international comparisons of the club sandwich

And for the most expensive sandwich in the world (from the Daily Mail)...