Greggs has fallen foul of Nanny and is preparing for a court fight against its ban on selling late night sausage rolls and bacon baps at its flagship Leicester Square store.
The baker was refused permission to trade hot food 24 hours a day last year after the Met argued that the extended opening times could lead to a wave of “crime and disorder”. The Met, I would have thought, has more pressing internal matters to address rather than fret over sausage rolls.
Anyhoo, Nanny is worried that the 24 hour Greggs will cause problems if people are allowed to eat sausage rolls there (rather ignoring the fact that a hungry drunk is more aggressive than a full one).
A three-day court hearing has now been scheduled for May 16, 17 and 18 where Greggs will appeal the decision not to allow it to serve up hot food after 11pm at the West End location.
The absolute nonsense of this ban can be seen by the fact that the majority of the food sold by Greggs is made at industrial bakeries and then re-heated. Shops do not need a licence to sell them because they are not kept hot in store.
However the other cooked products, such as bacon baps, sausage breakfast rolls and potato wedges, as well as tea and coffee, needs special permission from the local authority to be sold between 11pm and 5am.
As such, the Met and council have banned some food but not other food.
Greggs said customers could become “confused” if its full menu was not available to them all evening and would be more likely to cause trouble.
As noted, the Met has more than enough internal issues to worry about. Given that it can't see the absurdity of banning some food but not other food, I doubt that it has a chance in hell of being able to rectify its internal problems!
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