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Warburtons Limited is a British baking firm founded by Thomas Warburton in 1876 and based in Bolton, a town formerly in Lancashire, England, and now in Greater Manchester. For much of its history Warburtons only had bakeries in Lancashire and it remains a family-owned company. As of 2018, Warburtons has 12 bakeries, 14 depots, and 4,500 employees around the UK.
The company embarked on a large expansion programme in the late 1990s which continued in the 2000s and it has grown across the United Kingdom after being relatively unheard of outside the North West. By 2010, it had a 24% share of the UK bread market compared with 2% when it was based solely in Bolton. In 2008, Warburtons was the most popular bread in Lancashire with a 45% market share compared with just 15% in London.
In 2012, the Warburtons brand was the most popular bread in the United Kingdom, ahead of rivals Kingsmill and Hovis, a position it claimed in 2008. Up to 2010, Warburtons products were the second-best selling food and drink brand in the UK after Coca-Cola and ahead of brands such as Cadbury, Barr's, and Walker's.
The company donated £25,000 to the Conservative Party in 2010, and staged one of David Cameron speeches at its Bolton headquarters. In a 2016 interview with Campaign, chairman Jonathan Warburton said that Brexit was "a very good thing to have happened", and called the European Union a "rotting corpse".
Warburtons grew with the purchase of several smaller companies in North West England.
In 2010, the company announced the closure of its Newport facility, but retained a distribution depot at Port Talbot to continue service to the South Wales market. Production was transferred to a new plant in Bristol. The lease on the Newport plant was ceded to Brace's Bakery.
In 2013, the Daily Mirror named Warburtons as Britain's best loved shopping brand ahead of Coca-Cola, Heinz, and Cadbury.
In 2015, Warburtons announced the use of Sylvester Stallone in its marketing campaign, with Stallone re-enacting parts he had played previously. Another advert involves The Muppets singing about the new brand of giant crumpets, in a style almost identical to the opening theme of The Muppet Show, whilst the advert with Peter Kay plays on the Bolton connection.
In May 2019, Robert De Niro appeared in an advert for Warburtons bagel. In 2021, George Clooney appeared in a TV advert alongside Jonathan Warburton. In 2023, Samuel L. Jackson portrayed Warburton in an advert for the Warburtons Toastie loaf.
In March 2020, Warburtons was criticised by some smaller independent retailers for prioritising delivieries to larger supermarkets as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to the UK Government's measures against COVID-19, Warburton said: "It went too far... people have been hugely fearful, unnecessarily".
In January 2023, Waitrose said it had stopped stocking Warburtons products the previous year amid a commercial dispute, "after their performance didn’t meet our expectations."
Warburtons' staple products include the orange wrappered Toastie loaf, the blue wrappered Medium loaf and the green wrappered Thickest loaf, all of which are wrapped in wax paper.
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