Greggs shops reopen after payment problem fixed

Bakery chain Greggs says all its shops are trading as normal again after a payment problem caused some to close.

Customers found some branches closed or only able to accept cash on Wednesday morning.

It follows card payment outages at Sainsbury's and Tesco on Saturday, and McDonald's last Friday.

Greggs said it had "resolved a technical issue" that affected tills in some of its shops and apologised to customers for "any inconvenience".

Customers had earlier posted on social media their disappointment at being greeted by closed doors or having to leave empty handed as they did not have any cash.

One posted on X, formerly Twitter: "Greggs this morning cash only! Sitting here with my coffee watching almost everyone have to walk out."

Greggs operates more than 2,450 shops across the UK. It was unclear how many were affected although stores in cities including London, Manchester, Cardiff and Glasgow reportedly had issues.

A worker at a Greggs store in Manchester told the BBC that when staff turned on the tills on Wednesday morning an error meant no items were displayed. She said someone had arrived to fix the till so the store was able to open but others in the area were closed while they waited for technical help.

In Exeter a staff member told the BBC two of their three tills were not working due to the error but they had been able to serve customers on the remaining one. "I called shop support and they said they are working through the error and to not call back," she said.

Signs entitled "Oh Crumbs!" appeared in the doors of some shops including branches in Hillsborough, Chelmsford and Ludgate Hill in London.

The issue at Greggs is the latest in a series of technical glitches hitting some of the UK's biggest food brands.

Sainsbury's could not fulfil most online grocery deliveries on Saturday due to issues with an overnight software update which also hit contactless payments in stores. Unrelated technical issues also forced Tesco to cancel a "small number" of orders.

The day before, McDonald's restaurants around the world were unable to take orders due to a "global technology system outage".

These events have sparked speculation that the issues could be related.

Ilkka Turunen is the field chief technology officer at software supply chain management firm Sonatype, which works with brands including Toyota, American Express and T-Mobile. "The fact that these issues happened in sequential days, though, does hint at a common issue," he told the BBC.

"It's possible the simultaneous glitch at multiple leading UK supermarkets was the result of ongoing outages at a common network or payments infrastructure provider. Equally as likely is an issue at the software level, which for large businesses is a mesh of interdependent systems."

Fans of Greggs joked on social media that IT issues affecting the other brands were serious but an outage at the sausage roll chain was a step too far.

Bal Bansal posted on X: "Just heard Greggs are having an IT issue and having to close shops… personally, I think this is bordering a national emergency! Can all IT folk go and help Greggs… potentially, steak bakes as a reward!"

A statement from Greggs on Wednesday morning said some stores had not been able to take card and cash payments. An update from Greggs on Wednesday afternoon said: "We've resolved a technical issue that affected tills in some of our shops earlier this morning. All affected shops are now trading as normal. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused to our customers."

Additional reporting by Charlotte McDonald and Tom Gerken