Greggs has signed for a drive-thru unit at Eastgate Point in Sunderland, a £15 million commercial scheme on the former Littlewoods site that has stood empty since 2010. The shop will create 12 jobs. It lands as the chain runs an estate of 2,773 shops, of which 627 are operated by franchise partners rather than by Greggs itself.
Eastgate Point sits off Commercial Road in Hendon, on the approach to Sunderland city centre. The scheme runs to 125,000 sq ft across 19 industrial and commercial units in nine buildings, and is expected to support more than 350 jobs once occupied.
It is being developed by Building Design Northern with Hewitson Group, and delivered by Hewitson Construction. The site housed a Littlewoods call centre and has been vacant for fifteen years.
A drive-thru on a commercial scheme, not a high street
The unit is a drive-thru, which puts it in the format the chain has been adding fastest away from town centres. Retail parks, roadside sites and commercial schemes carry different trading patterns from a high street shop: longer opening hours, a heavier morning peak and a customer who arrives by car, a format several of the bakery and pastry franchises recruiting in the UK have moved towards.
What changed: clause added to the enPlacing one inside a 19-unit commercial development also builds in a captive daytime population, since the other occupiers bring staff to the site every working day.
Gentoo and BDN take the other units
Two occupiers were already confirmed before Greggs. Housing association Gentoo has taken space, and Building Design Northern is relocating its own headquarters to the scheme it is developing.
Further lettings are expected. “Securing Greggs is fantastic news for Eastgate Point and another real vote of confidence in this development, which is rapidly transforming the skyline on the approach to Sunderland city centre,” said Richard Marsden, managing director of BDN.
Where the opening sits in a 2,773-shop estate
Greggs reported 2,773 shops at 27 June 2026, of which 627 were franchised. It opened 65 new shops in the first half, including 27 franchised units and 17 relocations, for 34 net new openings, and expects around 100 to 110 net new shops across 2026 alongside ten trials of a convenience format called Greggs Express.
The Sunderland announcement came from the company’s own retail operations team and names no franchise partner, so whether the shop will be company-run or franchised is not stated, a distinction explained in what a franchise is.
Good to know
Greggs franchise shops are not sold to individuals looking for a high street unit. The company works with partners who already control sites in settings such as roadside, forecourt, grocery, transport hubs, hospitals and campuses, and the partner brings the site to the arrangement, an entry gate set by what an applicant already holds rather than by what they can raise, as being the right candidate to open a franchise discusses. That is why 627 franchised shops sit inside the estate without a public franchisee recruitment route of the kind other food-to-go networks run.
No opening date given yet
No opening date has been published for the Sunderland unit, and construction on the wider scheme is still under way. Further occupier announcements are expected at Eastgate Point, which will set how much daytime trade the drive-thru inherits from its neighbours.
For the chain, the next fixed point is the full-year figure against the 100 to 110 net new shops it has guided to, and the balance within that between company-run shops and franchised units.
