# 6.3 Identifying and describing opportunities

The next activity will help you explore how to identify opportunities and threats in the Greggs case study. You will also have an opportunity to write up a few sentences analysing opportunities and threats.

Figure 8 Thinking about the ‘O’ in ‘SWOT’.

## Activity 8

Read the rest of the Greggs case study text below and look for the sentences and phrases that refer to opportunities and threats. (You have already noted the information related to strengths and weaknesses in Activity 6.)

To help you do this, look at the table below the extract, which includes the bullet point notes that a business and management student, Tommy Cartmell (2024), made in his SWOT table when reading the text. Next to Tommy’s concise bullet points, write a corresponding sentence or phrase from the text. Notice how he has used his own words to make the bullet points. There may be more than one sentence or phrase for each bullet point.

## Case study: Greggs plc (2)

[…]

Plant-based bakery products were a natural evolution under Whiteside that started with introducing hot foods before diversifying into salads and falafel.

As David Cameron and successive Tory governments sought to clamp down on unhealthy foods amid rising obesity rates, Greggs appeared to be in the line of fire. ‘Bakery products, by their nature, don’t start from a great place,’ another former Greggs director conceded.

‘[But look at] the amount of sugar, fats and salts they’ve taken out. To do that successfully, you’ve got to do it gradually. Consumers will be turned off if the taste change is too extreme.’ Greggs replaced puff pastry with lower-fat shortcrust pastry, gradually reduced the mayonnaise content in some products and used internal taste-test panels to trial changes to recipes.

Clive Black, head of research at the stockbroker Shore Capital, credited Whiteside with being quick to see the way the political winds were blowing and reducing fat and sugar in the menu. ‘But it was not about throwing the baby out [with] the bathwater,’ Black said which for Greggs meant ‘keeping the sausage roll and the steak bake but evolving the range’.

A Daily Mail inspection earlier this year of the calorific content of the nation’s sausage rolls found that while the Greggs version charted high in the ranking, it had fewer calories than those peddled by Pret A Manger, Marks & Spencer and Ginsters.

Alongside healthier eating and the wooing of the middle classes, Greggs’s success over the past decade has been cemented by a rapid expansion of shops. More recently, it has targeted travel outlets such as railway stations, airports, motorway service stations and drivethrus. It has also opened more than 30 Outlet stores in disadvantaged areas that offer unsold food at a lower price.

The chain’s knack of reinventing itself has served it well, but are there limits to its breakneck growth? Black believes that opportunities still abound in the UK, particularly in the south of England. Greggs has 40 locations in London; Pret A Manger has 282.

Whiteside said in 2015 that growth outside the UK was ‘impossible’. Seven years earlier, Greggs ended a disastrous foray into Belgium, intended to be the launchpad to expand into Germany, France and the rest of the continent. But Currie disagrees: ‘There’s almost nothing off the agenda in terms of where we think we could take the brand and satisfy those needs.’

That said, she added: ‘We don’t have any sort of arrogance that Greggs will work everywhere in the world.’

Options are being considered. Currie refused to be drawn on locations, adding: ‘We’ve got a small team, a sort of an R&D project, which is looking at where we think that may go in the future.’

Tan at PwC said: ‘Like many UK concepts, it would need to flex that suite of products abroad … Greggs needs to find somewhere culturally that would accept what it does.’

While some believe that Ireland is the logical next step, he suggested an English-speaking country further afield, also with a love of pies, was more likely. ‘It might well be Australia or somewhere like that,’ Tan said.

Currie joined the company in 2010 after a fledgling career at Asda. Now at the helm, she surely knows the recipe for Greggs’s famous sausage roll? ‘Oh gosh, no. It’s in a locked box somewhere,’ she said. The details are shared among a handful of people on a strict ‘need to know basis’, Currie added.

Back in Godalming, Edwina Young, 70, will not hear a bad word about Greggs. ‘I love the coffee,’ the retired council worker said, clasping a box of yum-yums for her husband. The couple regularly travel the country in their car and are always looking out for a Greggs at motorway service stations.’

‘After all, as you age, you have to stop a lot more,’ she grinned.

(Gill, 2023)

## Table 5

Sentence or phrase in text (Gill, 2023) | Bullet point notes made by Tommy (Cartmell, 2024)
--- | ---
Opportunities
(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.) | Trend towards healthier eating Expansion into the appropriate overseas market
Threats
(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.) | Perception that Greggs is unhealthy Government policy on foods contributing to poor health

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### Answer

## Table 5 (completed)

Sentence or phrase in text (Gill, 2023) | Bullet point notes made by Tommy (Cartmell, 2024)
--- | ---
Opportunities
‘Plant-based bakery products were a natural evolution under Whiteside that started with introducing hot foods before diversifying into salads and falafel.’ | Trend towards healthier eating
‘Like many UK concepts, it would need to flex that suite of products abroad … Greggs needs to find somewhere culturally that would accept what it does.’ ‘While some believe that Ireland is the logical next step, he suggested an English-speaking country further afield, also with a love of pies, was more likely. “It might well be Australia or somewhere like that,” Tan said.’ | Expansion into the appropriate overseas market
Threats
‘Bakery products, by their nature, don’t start from a great place’ | Perception that Greggs is unhealthy
‘As David Cameron and successive Tory governments sought to clamp down on unhealthy foods amid rising obesity rates, Greggs appeared to be in the line of fire.’ | Government policy on foods contributing to poor health

### Comment

You will see that the wording of the bullet points made by Tommy is very concise. In some cases a single bullet point has been used to summarise more than one sentence from the original text. Some of the words used in the bullet points are key business concepts, such as ‘overseas market’. The use of the phrase ‘trend towards healthier eating’ enables Tommy, as the writer of the analysis, to look at a real-world business situation (e.g. the fact that a business has the possibility to diversify its product range to target the customer conscious of healthy eating) and make a more general, abstract statement about the situation.

The phrase ‘overseas market’ encapsulates many practical, real, on-the-ground facts but describes the situation succinctly and keeps the focus of the reader at the level of an idea, a concept. You can use a short word or phrase to represent a considerable amount of information without including all the details or evidence. This is useful as it enables you as the case study analyst to see at a glance the ‘snapshot’ of the company in its environment. It also means that when you come to write your analysis, you are able to write in a formal, abstract, academic style which is a convention in case study analyses.

OpenLearn - Business communication: writing a SWOT analysis
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