Crewe – Poundbakery

When I visited Liverpool a few years ago, I was surprised, delighted and excited to discover the Poundbakery chain with their tasty baked goods. They were never quite the quality of Greggs, but their pricing was low and I quite liked the whole arrangement.

Nearly nothing is now a pound, such is rampant inflation.

The pastries are pretty much all 2 for £2.50. The service was on point, friendly and welcoming. I ordered a steak bake and a chicken bake and when the team member put my chicken bake into a bag it promptly fell through the bottom onto the floor. It’s clear they’ve done everything they could to cut costs, including the quality of the paper bags. The team member quickly swept up the pastry into the bin, which felt a real waste, before giving me another.

This is the state of the chicken bake around one minute after I left. I don’t really demand high quality from pastries if I’m being honest, but this was bloody dreadful. There was nearly no chicken, the sauce was sweet and lacking in flavour and the pastry was overly greasy. The steak bake managed to get to the standard of below average at best, I found one minor piece of steak and the sauce was lacking in any depth of flavour. They’ve clearly cut the product quality to the lowest possible level in order to keep prices down, but the end result is a mess. I looked at the reviews of a number of their shops and they’re all generally poor, routinely mentioning friendly service and low quality products.

I’m not suggesting that I expected high quality from the Poundbakery, but I was a little disappointed given just how good they were routinely were a few years ago. The service was friendly and I liked the clarity of the pricing, but there has to come a point where the product quality can’t be cut any further. Anyway, I was glad to try it again as I live too far south to be able to visit their establishments.

And just for the record, this is the price list as of October 2023 (this blog can be so informative at times).