Gail’s has become a symbol of gentrification, and you either love it or hate it
Until, I knew very little about Gail’s. It was just another cafe chain to me. In my youth, I preferred the dark green siren call of Starbucks to the bland red and white of Gail’s.
But Gail’s has become a hot topic, especially in London’s Walthamstow, where a petition to stop a Gail’s opening was signed by hundreds of residents and said keeping out the bakery is about “safeguarding the soul of a beloved neighbourhood”.
Three months after that branch of Gail’s successfully opened its doors, the owner of a nearby bakery, Samantha Davies, told MyLondon: “I’m selling up now. I’m not gonna be waking up at 6am just to stand here all morning doing nothing. Gail’s has impacted everyone.”
The chain’s rapid expansion has plenty of vocal opponents who claim it’s a worrying sign of gentrification. However, Gail’s is beloved in other parts of the country. In Streatham in London, mum Zee Jones, who has lived in the area for 11 years, said: “I can hear both sides, but there aren’t many bakeries around here. Many independent ones already have their set clientele, so they shouldn’t really be affected.”
On a Thursday morning in Canary Wharf, the queue is certainly long enough to know which side the finance bros agree with. The pastries look inviting in their little glass case, and I initially intend on getting a sweet and a savoury. But the latter has few offerings, with only some very small bagels and rolls that don’t particularly tickle my fancy. So I stick to sweet, ordering three pastries and a coffee to truly test the cafe.
After the member of staff serving me has derisively told me ‘that’s a lot of food for one person’, thus making me vindictively order one more pastry and pick it all up. The coffee, a regular cappuccino, cost me £4.10, which is outrageous even for Canary Wharf. It’s not particularly good, nor is it the dreadful slop some chains serve up. It’s overly milky, slightly too dark roast for me, and the foam is more similar to a latte than a capp. I wouldn’t normally complain, but for nearly a fiver I am disappointed already.
Back at the office, I unwrap the baked goods from their waxy paper and lay out my bounty. The cardamom and sesame morning bun is my first choice. I know a thing or two about cardamom buns; growing up in Norway, no day was perfect without a cardamom bun from Baker Hansen. Soft, pillowy, with a crunchy sugar layer on the outside, it’s the standard against which I measure all others.
So imagine my shock when this ‘morning bun’ – for which I paid £3.75 – turns out to be a crumbly, croissant-like concoction more akin to a cronut. It’s sticky, it’s sickly sweet, its edges are dry, and the sesame adds nothing but an embarrassing thing in my teeth. It’s nice, but I would not pay more than £1 for it, and yet I have.
The same story continues when I try the £2.80 croissant. I am not French enough to convincingly judge a croissant, but my French colleague said: “Having grown up in France, croissants have always been a big part of my life. So since moving to the UK, I have been on the hunt for some that remind me of the delicious taste I am used to, while also being affordable.
“And as Gail’s has been all the rage in recent months, I decided to try their plain croissant for the first time. For £2.80, I expected to be impressed – but I wasn’t. There was nothing wrong with them per se, apart from the fact that they weren’t as fluffy inside as I thought they would be, but they weren’t anything special either. I’m disappointed to say that the hunt continues.”
At this point, neither of us could finish the chocolate and almond croissant. It is both of our favourites, but the overly sweet, dry, yet doughy qualities of the previous two pastries put me right off the third. It was £4.10, and it’s not going to waste; I just can’t face it right now.
Overall, I can sum up Gail’s as thoroughly underwhelming. Its overpriced coffee is no better than Greggs, its pastries are simultaneously too dry and too doughy, and everything has a sickly sweet undertone that sticks with you throughout the day. Save your money, support your independent cafes, and steer clear.
For those not in the loop, Gail’s is a rapidly expanding chain of upmarket coffee shops, loved by some for its croissants and cinnamon buns and loathed by others who say it is a bland corporate enterprise that shunts local businesses out. It was founded by an Israeli baker, Gail Mejia, in the 1990s, initially as a wholesale bakery in Hendon, supplying London’s restaurants. That site still exists and is described as its “mother” bakery. However, the chain is now majority-owned by the US private equity group Bain Capital. It has dozens of sites all over England.