Greggs vs Coopland vs M&S Bakery
We blind-tested 11 savoury bakes from Greggs, Cooplands and M&S with three tasters and the labels swapped. Greggs won the sausage roll and the vegan round, and nobody touches it on price per 100g. Cooplands took steak and cheese & onion with proper chunky fillings. M&S had the best sausagemeat of the lot but costs roughly triple Greggs per 100g. Overall: Greggs on points, Cooplands if you’re pie-first, M&S only as a treat.
The Blind Taste Test: Greggs vs Cooplands vs M&S Bakery
Three chains, eleven bakes, one kitchen table and three tasters who weren’t allowed to see a single bag, box or price tag. I’ve wanted to run this properly for ages — Greggs the national default, Cooplands the Yorkshire chain people swear is better, and M&S the premium pretender that just launched a £2.25 hot bakery sausage roll aimed straight at Greggs. Here’s everything we found, including the maths nobody else publishes.
How we ran the blind test 🙈
Same morning, same kitchen, three tasters (me plus two friends who each have strong and completely incompatible bakery opinions). Everything was bought within a two-hour window: Greggs and Cooplands hot from the counter, M&S from the Foodhall. One honest caveat up front — M&S doesn’t run a hot pie counter, so its steak and cheese & onion entries were its chilled pies baked at home exactly per the pack instructions. The new M&S hot bakery sausage roll was tested hot, as sold.
Each item was decanted onto a coded plate, served warm, and scored out of 10 for pastry, filling and overall before anyone saw a receipt. Prices and calories were locked in a drawer until scoring finished. Value was scored separately afterwards, because a blind palate can’t taste £1.92 per 100g — but your wallet definitely can. Greggs prices below are the standard high-street tier; city and airport tiers run higher, as our London vs rest-of-UK price comparison breaks down.
Round 1: Sausage rolls 🌭
| Contender | Weight | Price | Calories | Blind score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 Greggs Sausage Roll | 103g | £1.30 | 348 kcal | 8.4 |
| 🥈 M&S hot bakery Sausage Roll | not published | £2.25 | not published | 8.1 |
| 🥉 Cooplands Sausage Roll | 58g | £1.00 | 165 kcal | 7.1 |
The surprise of the day: Cooplands’ standard sausage roll is a 58g bite — barely half a Greggs. Lovely flaky pastry and honestly seasoned meat (Cooplands declares 18% pork in it), but two of our three tasters finished it in four bites and felt robbed. Cooplands’ answer is the 491 kcal Super Sausage Roll, which we’d happily re-test, but on the standard counter item it couldn’t compete on satisfaction.
Greggs vs M&S was the real fight, and it split exactly the way BBC Good Food’s head-to-head found: Greggs’ pastry is crisper and flakier, M&S’ filling is chunkier and better seasoned with visible herbs. Blind, M&S edged the filling scores; Greggs took pastry and the “would I queue again” test. Greggs’ filling is a seasoned pork mix at 20% pork with rusk, if you’re wondering what that familiar texture actually is — our full sausage roll nutrition guide has the complete panel.
Round 2: Steak 🥧
| Contender | Weight | Price | Calories | Blind score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 Cooplands Steak & Ale Pie | not published | £2.95 | 530 kcal | 8.6 |
| 🥈 M&S Steak & Ale Puff Pastry Pie | 200g | ~£3.25 | 520 kcal | 8.2 |
| 🥉 Greggs Steak Bake | 136.4g | £1.85 | 411 kcal | 7.9 |
Cooplands’ first round win, and it wasn’t close once the forks went in. Real chunks of steak in a proper ale gravy (the pie is made with a Yorkshire brewery’s beer, and you can taste the difference), under a shortcrust lid that held its structure. M&S’ pie was rich and glossy, genuinely dinner-grade, but it’s a bake-at-home item — you’re paying £3.25 and spending 30 minutes of oven time. The Greggs Steak Bake remains a masterpiece of convenience: that fine, smooth beef-and-gravy filling at £1.85 is unbeatable value, but blind, against two pies with actual chunks in, it tasted simpler. Full tier pricing for it lives on our Steak Bake prices page.
Round 3: Cheese & onion 🧀
| Contender | Weight | Price | Calories | Blind score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 Cooplands Cheese & Onion Pasty | not published | £2.90 | 419 kcal | 8.3 |
| 🥈 Greggs Cheese & Onion Bake | 141.4g | £1.60 | 408 kcal | 7.6 |
| 🥉 M&S Cheddar Cheese & Onion Pie | 200g | £3.00 | 618 kcal | 6.9 |
Cooplands again. Its pasty filling — proper cheddar and onion you can identify, rather than a cheese sauce — won the filling vote unanimously. Greggs’ bake is the value pick at £1.60 and its pastry scored well, but the filling reads sweeter and softer blind. M&S’ pie is enormous (618 kcal — the heaviest item in the whole test) and the shortcrust turned dense after baking; good, not great, and the most expensive per mouthful.
Round 4: Vegan 🌱
| Contender | Weight | Price | Calories | Blind score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 Greggs Vegan Sausage Roll | 101g | £1.45 | 308 kcal | 8.0 |
| 🥈 Cooplands Vegan Sausage Roll | not published | in-store only | 235 kcal | 7.4 |
| M&S — no hot-counter vegan bake | — | — | — | sat out |
Greggs invented the mass-market vegan sausage roll and it shows: the Quorn mycoprotein filling is peppery and satisfying, and two of our three tasters couldn’t pick it as the vegan option blind. Cooplands’ version is lighter and cleaner-tasting but blander. M&S has excellent chilled vegan pies yet nothing ready-to-eat at a counter, which in a bakery showdown is a round missed entirely.
The price-per-100g truth 💷
Sticker prices lie because portion sizes don’t match. Normalise them and the whole test changes shape. Here’s the sausage roll round, per 100g, with the working shown:
That “quid” Cooplands roll? Per 100g it’s 36% dearer than Greggs, because you’re buying 58g of it. The same pattern holds elsewhere: Greggs’ cheese & onion bake works out at £1.13 per 100g against £1.50 for the M&S pie, and the Greggs Steak Bake at £1.36 per 100g against £1.63 for M&S. Cooplands’ pies couldn’t be normalised (no published weights), but at £2.90–£2.95 a pie they sit firmly in premium territory too. If your budget matters — and on this site, it usually does — Greggs is the only chain here pricing like it remembers the cost-of-living crisis.
Whichever chain you pick, bundle pricing changes the picture. A Greggs Savoury Bake & Hot Drink deal from £3.35 beats buying separately, and Cooplands regularly runs 2-pies-for-£3 offers that halve the premium. Our meal deal comparison shows how far the Greggs Big Deal stretches the same logic.
Calories & Syns, compared 📉
For anyone counting — Slimming World, WW or plain calories — here’s the whole test on one table. Syn values are estimates at the standard public guide of roughly 20 kcal per Syn; Slimming World publishes no official figures for any of these chains, which is the same method we use across our Greggs Slimming World Syns guide.
| Item | Calories | Est. Syns | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cooplands Sausage Roll (58g) | 165 kcal | 8.5 | Lightest roll — because it’s half the size |
| M&S British Large Sausage Roll (60g) | 239 kcal | 12 | Chilled pack, bake at home |
| Greggs Vegan Sausage Roll | 308 kcal | 15.5 | Lighter than its pork sibling |
| Greggs Sausage Roll | 348 kcal | 17.5 | The benchmark |
| Greggs Cheese & Onion Bake | 408 kcal | 20.5 | See our full Greggs calorie guide for the rest of the range |
| Cooplands Cheese & Onion Pasty | 419 kcal | 21 | Won round 3, though |
| Greggs Steak Bake | 411 kcal | 20.5 | See our Aldi steak bake cost test for a cheaper route |
| Cooplands Steak & Ale Pie | 530 kcal | 26.5 | Worth every Syn, occasionally |
| M&S Steak & Ale Pie (200g) | 520 kcal | 26 | Dinner, not a snack |
| M&S Cheese & Onion Pie (200g) | 618 kcal | 31 | Heaviest item tested |
The pattern is almost poetic: the best-tasting items in the test are also the heaviest, and the lightest are the smallest. None of this is everyday food, and the government’s Eatwell Guide frames it sensibly — it’s the week’s pattern that matters, not one pasty. If you’re on plan, the Greggs roll at 17.5 Syns is a known quantity you can budget for; the M&S cheese pie at 31 is a day’s Syns wearing shortcrust.
The full scorecard 🧮
| Round (blind, /10) | Greggs | Cooplands | M&S |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sausage roll | 8.4 | 7.1 | 8.1 |
| Steak | 7.9 | 8.6 | 8.2 |
| Cheese & onion | 7.6 | 8.3 | 6.9 |
| Vegan | 8.0 | 7.4 | — |
| Average blind taste | 8.0 | 7.9 | 7.7 |
| Value score (per 100g + deals) | 9.5 | 8.0 | 4.5 |
| Overall (70% taste, 30% value) | 8.5 | 7.9 | 6.7 |
Working on the overall line, since anyone can invent a weighting: Greggs (8.0 × 0.7) + (9.5 × 0.3) = 8.45, rounded to 8.5. Cooplands (7.9 × 0.7) + (8.0 × 0.3) = 7.93 → 7.9. M&S (7.7 × 0.7) + (4.5 × 0.3) = 6.74 → 6.7. Blind, the three are closer than anyone’s loyalty admits — 8.0 vs 7.9 vs 7.7. The gap opens entirely on value, and that gap is enormous.
The verdict 🏆
Greggs wins the test, and not on nostalgia. Best pastry blind, best vegan roll by distance, and the only price-per-100g that respects your wallet. Buy it at a standard-tier branch, not an airport one.
Cooplands is the connoisseur’s pick. If you’re within reach of a Yorkshire shop and you want pie — real chunks, real gravy, real cheese — it beat Greggs blind in two rounds out of four. Pay the premium on pie days, not on sausage roll days, where its standard roll is a 58g amuse-bouche.
M&S is a treat, not a habit. The best sausagemeat we tasted all day lives in that £2.25 hot bakery roll, and the chilled pies are proper dinners. But at roughly double to triple Greggs per 100g, it’s the chain you choose when someone else is paying or it’s someone’s birthday.
Frequently asked questions ❓
Who won the blind taste test — Greggs, Cooplands or M&S?
Greggs, on points. It took the sausage roll and vegan rounds blind, and its value score was untouchable once we normalised prices per 100g. Cooplands won the steak and cheese & onion rounds with chunkier, better-seasoned fillings, and M&S had the best sausagemeat of the three but finished last overall because of price.
Is Cooplands the same as the Co-op?
No. Cooplands is an independent Yorkshire bakery chain founded in Scarborough in 1885. EG Group owned it from 2021 until October 2025, when a management buy-in returned it to independent, Yorkshire-based ownership. It now runs around 150-160 shops, mostly across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the North East. It has nothing to do with the Co-op supermarket.
Why does M&S bakery cost so much more per 100g than Greggs?
Three reasons: all-butter pastry and RSPCA Assured British pork cost more than standard shortening and mixtures, M&S sells smaller chilled packs (a 60g large roll at £1.15 is £1.92 per 100g against Greggs’ £1.26), and Foodhall positioning carries a premium. The new £2.25 hot bakery roll is genuinely excellent filling-wise, but you are paying roughly double Greggs for the privilege.
Eleven bakes later, the honest summary is this: Britain’s bakery wars aren’t a coronation, they’re a split decision. Greggs takes it on the scorecard because value is a flavour too. But keep a Cooplands pie in your life for the days that deserve one — and let M&S be the birthday exception. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s half a coded plate C in the fridge and it’s still technically evidence.
