Stop telling porkies: The new Greggs will not bake local business

Aberystwyth is a strange place. Whereas actual proper news makes waves in other university towns, here we collectively lose our shit over a new Greggs.

People have reacted to the recent opening in one of two ways: either praising how we can get the same products on offer across the country, or acting like the council have stuck a meth lab next to a school because its introduction will apparently shut down local businesses.

But both sides miss the point. Let’s be clear: it’s a fucking bakery selling mediocre pasties to mediocre people who don’t care where they get their mediocre pasties from. The only shops that will go under because of this are the sort of ones so bad they will anyway.

Not so evil after all

Y Popty will be fine, and the cute place round the corner from the Nag’s will live on.

Did Wetherspoons kill off Cambrian, the Angel, or Rummers? Have Starbucks and Costa killed off Agnelli’s or Sophie’s? No. Because the thing about ‘local businesses’ is that the good ones still tend to live on, because they actually have something to offer.

Greggs isn’t Starbucks or Wetherspoons. Starbucks famously avoided a metric fucktonne of tax while we faced major cuts, and Wetherspoons has been accused of contributing to the downfall of the Great British Pub. In comparison, Greggs was the only retailer to get full marks from the “Fair Tax Mark” in 2013. The worst crime Greggs has ever been convicted of is wrongly using the name “Cornish Pasties” to brand a product.

But, really, the worst thing about this uproar is how so many of these irate people simply don’t care about local businesses at all. Sure there are exceptions, but you don’t see them getting their meat from the butchers, or their veggies (hah!) from the farmer’s market. Hell, you even see them going into Costa and Starbucks now that it’s no longer cool to have a moral issue with them.

Third year Katharina Wezel is no fan of Greggs, but doesn’t believe they’ll be bad for business: “I don’t think that local shops will disappear simply because we have a Greggs or a Starbucks. But I personally think it’s morally wrong to support chains like this. Besides, local shops normally provide better quality for cheaper, so I probably won’t be going to Greggs very often.”

She’s right. So calm down, nobody’s going to ram a Greggs sausage roll down your throat. You’ll still be free to choose where to get your pastries, and the local economy isn’t going to collapse just because there’s another place to get a sandwich.

Save the angry rants about “the corporations man”, and vote with your wallet.