Are you a buyer for the M&S Bakery? Talk me through your thinking …

[Starmadrama]

… in relation to hot cross buns. I’ve been in my local M&S today and the shelves were heaving with lots of flavours of hot cross buns - red velvet, chocolate, lemon etc - but the section for fruit ones was empty. Clearly there is very little demand for these bastardised hot cross buns!

I finally found a single pack of fruit buns abandoned by the till. I did think about getting the fruit buns earlier in the week but the expiry date was before Easter 🙄

Did any market research inform this expansion of the Hot Cross Bun offer I wonder?

The chocolate cherry ones from Sainsbury’s are fabulous.

If you find the buyer, please also ask them why they seem to only make about 5 of the Red Leicester loaves for the whole county and there are only ever empty trays in most stores!

Not sure if anyone else has told you but the peppermint ones are year round now

I don’t buy them anymore as they have palm oil in them.

Was in M&S this afternoon. Piles and piles of the odd flavours starting to be marked down and lots of people remarking that you should not mess with a hot cross bun. There is going to be so much wasted, I wonder what they will do with all the stock.

Well in my branch I just got given two packs of the cheese ones for free. There were piles of them already with discounted stickers on and the manager clearly thought that with closing time in less than an hour, they might as well. Will report back!

my BF used to work in market research. Part
of her job was following up on focus groups. She said many people would tick any old shite options because:

they thought it was what the company wanted to hear (people pleasers proliferate in survey answerers apparently)

they thought it was funny to muck up results

or they just literally did it at speed and didn’t care what they did, just get it done, take their money and run

So no, I wouldnt believe that lots of people actually wanted tiramisu or red velvet ones

I like the chocolate ones. Last year they were constantly sold out but they’re in abundance this year.

I agree!! We eat them all year round and we’re struggling to get ‘normal’ ones anywhere!! 😥😥

I’ve been ordering 6 packs (yes 6!) of the chocolate ones every week on my Ocado order - my daughter and her 3 children love them!
She’s very disappointed to hear I can’t even find them listed for my Ocado delivery tomorrow.

I wish I could find curranty ones without bastard peel and sultanas in.

no wish to try the choc based ones but happy with a st clemance or apple spiced.

They have an in house food product development team. Honestly we just want proper hot cross buns on Good Friday. Just that.

A novelty flavoured and/or filled hot cross bun isn’t a HCB to me, it’s just a flavoured bun with a cross on it. I thought hot cross bun was a flavour as well as a style/shape. In the days of yore you never had to specify if it was the “original” flavour because they were all HCB flavour.

But talking of filling, I googled the red velvet ones to see if they do indeed have a cross and the photos of the white drippy centre has put me off a bit

My dad WAS from Yorkshire and always had cheese with his fruit cake.

I agree!! Random hard chunks of lemon peel was horrid!

Agree. Yet to find any novelty flavours that match up to the original.

I was surprised that both DH and I actually really liked the lemon curd ones. Glad Easter's over now though so no more being tempted by the chocolate flavour!

I got a 4 packet of the chocolate HCB from M&S today reduced to 50p.
Just heated one for 2 mins in the air fryer (as suggested on the packaging) and it was very nice!
Looking forward to my second for breakfast tomorrow.

There was actually a gathering in my local m&s bakery aisle at the weekend as everyone was looking for normal hot cross buns. I nabbed the last pack but gave it to an older lady who claimed at 80 years old, she had no business trying a cheese hot cross bun 🤣

I’m not a raisin fan so don’t like regular HCB. I LOVE M&S ‘extremely chocolatey’ ones and I like the apple ones too. I do draw the line at red velvet though 😂😂😂

Slightly off topic but has anyone had the white chocolate and raspberry cookies from M and S or Sainsburys? Falling for an influencer update here but I’m tempted!

I've had the raspberry and white chocolate ones from M&S and they are lovely

There are lots of regular HCBs on half price in M&S on Finsbury Pavement in London, if anyone is interested

I really like the apple and cinnamon ones. In fact, I have a stash in the freezer.

I LOVED those cookies. I do love a traditional hot cross bun but none of these crazy flavours.