STORY: SUPERMARKET PROMISES TO REMOVE FALSE CLAIM

As a result of a Real Bread Campaign investigation, and subsequent research by BBC Morning Live, Morrisons has admitted it was using the claim ‘made in store from scratch’ to market products that were not made in store from scratch.

Replying on 30 July 2024 to a trading standards complaint submitted by the Campaign on 12 June 2024, West Yorkshire Joint Services (WYJS) included the confession from Morrisons: “We apologise that the signage you have seen that states our Best bread is ‘made from scratch’ is incorrect and we have advised all stores to take it down.”

Real Bread Campaign coordinator Chris Young said: “We welcome this result and trust that trading standards officers at West Yorkshire Joint Services will ensure the company swiftly fulfils its promise to correct this misleading marketing.”

Call for review

In its response to WYJS, Morrisons also admitted: “Our core range of scratch-produced bread and rolls is complemented by a limited number of more specialised products, including our Best Range, which require non-standard ingredients e.g sour dough [sic.], or extended production times, that make them very difficult to produce in store.”

These products are manufactured by third party companies and re-baked in stores. Some Morrisons stores do not make anything in the ‘Bakery’ section fresh from scratch.

Despite this, the supermarket:

• Is failing to tell shoppers which ‘Bakery’ products were manufactured elsewhere, leaving people to understand that all were made in-store.
• Is failing to tell, shoppers which ‘Bakery’ products were frozen between manufacture and sale, leaving people unaware of this important fact.
• Is compounding these omissions by using the claims 'baked fresh daily', 'baked right here' and 'baked here every day' in cases where it would be more honest and truthful to say 'RE-baked daily', 'RE-baked right here' and 'RE-baked here every day'.
• Has not answered the question of whether it sells ‘Bakery’ products that were manufactured overseas, without making shoppers aware of this fact.

The Campaign has asked WYJS to review these points of case, and is awaiting responses to similar complaints about other supermarket chains.