Costa living crisis: Budget Greggs overtakes pricier rival to become UK's biggest chain
Expansion means Greggs overtakes Costa to become UK's largest chain of cafes
Greggs' expansion has seen it overtake Costa to become the UK's biggest coffee operator, with customers snapping up £1.80 Americanos.
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The budget bakery has added 34 outlets to its total this year and now operates 2,737 locations across the country, edging past the 2,707 Costas, a report from the Allegra World Coffee Portal’s Project Cafe UK 2026 has shown.
While Greggs is not a conventional coffee shop, it serves a wide variety of hot drinks which can be bundled into a deal alongside cake or a snack.
And the expansion is not set to stop there, with Greggs lining up another 100 openings following on from sales increasing in the first half of 2026.
The two companies have also been, perhaps unwittingly, battling for supremacy on which coffee has the highest dosage of caffeine, with a report suggesting that Costa is pipping Greggs in that regard.
Greggs has recently launched its Steak and Stilton bake and renamed its Sausage, Bean & Cheese Melt as The Sausage, Bean and Cheese Thing after Andy Burnham got his favourite pastry's name wrong when asked by LBC.
