The Greggs bakery chain, famous for its steak bakes and vegan sausage rolls, has predicted it will crash to its first-ever annual loss as a result of the pandemic, and it does not expect profits to recover until 2022. The chain’s annual sales slumped by more than £300m year on year in 2020, pushing it to forecast a £15m full-year loss, as coronavirus restrictions closed its shops and hit revenues. The company said it did not expect to return to pre-Covid levels of profit until next year at the earliest. It would be the first annual loss for the retailer since it listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1984 and the group’s chief executive, Roger Whiteside, said he believed it would be the company’s first slump into the red in more than 80 years of existence. The company, which has more than 2,000 outlets in the UK, reported sales of £811m for the 53 weeks to 2 January, a 30% decline on the £1.16bn figure for 2019. However, despite taking a financial battering in 2020, the company said it still planned to open 100 more stores this year. Greggs said its fourth-quarter sales averaged 81% of the equivalent 2019 level, an improvement on the 71.2% achieved in the previous quarter, while it had to manage variable trading conditions across the UK. Whiteside said the impact of Covid-19 had been “enormous” but the retailer had changed its working practices to allow it to provide takeaway food under different levels of government coronavirus restrictions. Despite Greggs’ grim forecast for its full-year results, the firm’s shares jumped 8% on Wednesday, making the retailer the second biggest riser on the FTSE 250 index. Investors were encouraged by the news that Greggs’ sales recovered faster than expected when its stores were allowed to trade, combined with growing revenues from its home delivery service. Greggs announced plans to extend deliveries to a further 200 outlets, taking the total to 800, and also test a dinner menu for home delivery as well as opening the 100 new outlets this year. The company said it was taking advantage of cheap rents being offered by landlords, particularly in city centres and spots where people could park cars. Whiteside said the business wanted to open as many as outlets as possible in London, where it was underrepresented, including at major train stations. “There is no question that, largely because of Covid, city centres will be impacted over the long term and there will be less working in offices than before and less shopping as people have discovered that home working and internet shopping is convenient,” he added. “But it doesn’t mean city centres will be empty places ... history shows city centres as the driving force of any economy and so they will come back even if it is at a lower level.” The pandemic also resulted in job losses at the bakery chain and Greggs confirmed it had made 820 staff redundant in 2020 as it looked to cut costs.