Waitrose has mysteriously axed all Warburtons’ products including its much-loved crumpets sparking fury amongst customers who today vowed to shop elsewhere.
The baker, run by pro-Brexit Jonathan Warburton, sells 124million of the griddled teatime treats per year with some shoppers claiming the middle-class supermarket’s decision ‘must be’ because its owner backed Britain leaving the EU.
Sales of crumpets in the UK are up ten per cent year-on-year, but mysteriously Waitrose has axed its deal with the country’s biggest producer, Warburtons, at a time when the supermarket’s own crumpet sales fell by 15 per cent.
Critics have raised the politics of the Bolton bakery’s owner, who after the 2016 Brexit referendum declared: ‘Brexit is a very good thing to have happened’.
Mr Warburton, who stars in its adverts alongside George Clooney, Robert De Niro and The Muppets, also agreed the company could make a £25,000 donation to the Conservative Party in 2010.
Some have vowed to boycott Waitrose completely after the supermarket said the baker’s ‘performance didn’t meet expectations’ in a row reminiscent of a 2022 dispute between Tesco and Heinz that saw baked beans and ketchup disappear from the shelves.
One customer tweeted Waitrose to say: ‘I completely disagree with your decision to delist @Warburtons products. Their excellent crumpets are a nation’s favourite’. But another pointed out: ‘There MUST be a Brexit angle to this, surely?’ One more customer said: ‘@waitrose having a spat with @Warburtons – will be shopping at Sainsbury’s then. Ain’t doing without!’
Robert De Niro starring in an advert with chairman of the baking business, Jonathan Warburton, who said Brexit would be good for Britain. Waitrose has pulled all its products over ‘performance’
This Waitrose customer says he will be shopping elsewhere, namely Sainsbury’s
One social media user was among those who insisted Brexit was a factor
Another customer said that they ‘completely disagree’ with the decision
One social media user shared a Waitrose post from 2022, they claim has been deleted. The post says that fewer Warburtons products were being stocked because other products were more popular.
Warburtons: 147-year-old British family-owned baking business from Bolton which turned to Robert DeNiro’s talents to shore up sales
Bakery boss Jonathan Warburton in one of their ads
Warburtons was founded by Thomas Warburton in 1876 and is based in Bolton, Greater Manchester.
For much of its history Warburtons only had bakeries in Lancashire and it remains a family-owned company.
The company – which currently employs almost 5,000 members of staff – embarked on a large expansion program in the late 1990s which continued in the 2000s and it has grown across the UK after being relatively unheard of outside the Bolton and Manchester area.
Last year it was Britain’s sixth biggest food and beverage brand, ahead of McVities, Birds Eye and Pepsi, according to consultancy Nielsen.
In recent years, it has tried to stem the drop in sales from its packaged bread products with new bagel and wrap categories.
Famously, it hired US actor Robert De Niro to appear as the mafia-style Bagel Boss for its advertising.
Waitrose has been bombarded with messages on social media about why Warburtons’ bread and associated products are no longer on offer. MailOnline has asked both Waitrose and Warburtons to comment.
Waitrose this weekend claimed that Warburtons’ ‘performance didn’t meet our expectations’, in a rebuke which caused the bakery’s chairman Jonathan Warburton to call the removal of his products from the shelves of stores across the country ‘a shame’.
Shoppers have express their anger and demanded the products return to their shelves, claiming that own brand crumpets and rival Hovis’ are not to the same standard.
The supermarket still holds products from Buckinghamshire-based Hovis, Warburton’s biggest competitor, and leaves Waitrose isolated among top grocers, with rival supermarket chains Tesco and Sainsbury’s still stocking Warburtons products.
It is likely to heap pressure on Waitrose boss James Bailey, who has struggled to prevent the supermarket losing ground to rivals – after a report found Waitrose’s share of the grocery market at the end of December had fallen to 4.7 per cent from 5.1 per cent a year earlier.
A Warburtons spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘At Warburtons quality is paramount. We put an awful lot of care into the 2million products we bake and deliver to over 19,000 stores across the country every single day.
‘We know that consumers recognise the quality, and value of our products and that is why we are the number one bakery brand in the UK. It is a shame that Waitrose chose to delist us last year and we would of course love to be back on their shelves in the future.’
A Waitrose spokesman told The Telegraph: ‘We stopped selling Warburtons products a year ago after their performance didn’t meet our expectations. We focus on fantastic products at great value that our customers love and we remain open to working with Warburtons in the future.’
Reacting to the move, furious shoppers tweeted: ‘Oh gosh @waitrose – please don’t let @Warburtons go. They’ve always been delicious whenever I’ve bought them #crumpets’.
Another said: ‘@waitrose I completely disagree with your decision to delist @Warburtons products. Among others their excellent crumpets are a Nation’s favourite & their Wholemeal ”no added sugar” sliced loaf is perfect, just two examples of their superior quality products. Please reconsider’.
A third tweeted: ‘@Warburtons @Waitrose sorry to hear about your falling out with Waitrose – I’m going to miss your products’.
Waitrose said: ‘We stopped selling Warburtons products a year ago after their performance didn’t meet our expectations. We focus on fantastic products at great value that our customers love and we remain open to working with Warburtons in the future.’
Others begged for their favorites to return
Warburtons was founded by Thomas Warburton in 1876 and is based in Bolton, Greater Manchester.
For much of its history Warburtons only had bakeries in Lancashire and it remains a family-owned company.
The company – which currently employs almost 5,000 members of staff – embarked on a large expansion program in the late 1990s which continued in the 2000s and it has grown across the UK after being relatively unheard of outside the Bolton and Manchester area.
Last year it was Britain’s sixth biggest food and beverage brand, ahead of McVities, Birds Eye and Pepsi, according to consultancy Nielsen.
In recent years, it has tried to stem the drop in sales from its packaged bread products with new bagel and wrap categories.
Famously, it hired US actor Robert De Niro to appear as the mafia-style Bagel Boss for its advertising.
The row between Waitrose and Warburtons is likely to draw parallels betwen the spat between Tesco and Heinz last year, when Heinz baked beans and ketchup were pulled from the shelves after attempts by the US brand to increase prices were ignored by the supermarket.
Jars of Marmite were pulled from Tesco shelves in 2016 as the supermarket resisted an attempt by Unilever to raise wholesale prices.
