The very British cult of M&S food

The Harry hype didn’t happen by accident. We have Kathryn Turner, the retailer’s director of product development, to thank. In recent months, she’s become an unlikely social media star, vlogging behind-the-scenes snippets of life at M&S HQ and introducing us to the people behind the nation’s favourite picky bits and sweet treats to the tune of 1.3 million likes. 

There’s Owen from dips, Laurie from ice cream, Fran from trends and Bran from M&S Café – all the brilliant minds who’ve lured us into spending a small fortune on our lunch breaks when we really only popped in for a Coke Zero. Special shout-outs, too, to the Marks & Sparks OGs: Percy (the pig) and Colin (the caterpillar). No one else in the confectionery animal game is doing it quite like them. 

Only eight years ago, M&S chairman Archie Norman described the company as a “business on a burning platform”. Today, the store is less a high-street car crash and more a delectable salve for our national anxieties. 

Within the aisles of any M&S food hall, you’ll find nostalgia (walnut whips) and unabashed patriotism (Union Jack shopping bags) alongside innovation (chicken Kyiv hot melting dips) and global influences (chow mein ready meals) – a proper, hopeful vision of Britishness that can be scattered on a picnic blanket as you try to avoid the news. This is not just food. This is comfort eating through the UK’s identity crisis.

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But let’s be real. Most shoppers aren’t consciously chomping on “dinky” sausage rolls to quell their nascent socio-political fears. The real driver behind the cult of M&S is its sweet spot positioning of affordable aspiration. 

This is nothing new. For decades, it’s been a distinctly middle-class brand, catering to our desire for daily indulgence with bougie gastro pub meal kits and three-for-£8 antipasti pots. You’d never do your big shop there, of course – even if, as some people insist, the veg really isn’t that much more expensive than Tesco. M&S is the place you go when you want – no, deserve – a civilised treat. 

Alongside Turner’s social media account, M&S has partnered with endless food influencers to notify the nation when a new product drops. But savvy marketing aside, the brand’s renaissance also happens to coincide with a broader shift in how we consume food. 

On one end of the spectrum, we have record-high shoplifting rates in British supermarkets, with perpetrators often driven to theft by soaring food prices and the perpetual cost of living crisis. On the other, there’s an online vicarious obsession with how the rich eat. 

Any budding TikTok chef can boost their chances of virality by claiming they’re a personal chef in the Hamptons (sometimes, they genuinely are). In LA, luxury food store Erewhon has become a sightseeing hotspot for tourists looking to gawk at its astronomical prices (a single strawberry imported from Kyoto costs $19.99), and sample its viral, often celebrity-endorsed $20 smoothies. 

At both extremes, eating well has become a luxury. Maybe you can’t afford to spruce up your instant noodles tonight, but at least you can watch someone else satisfy your cravings while you eat them. 

Luxury fashion houses have clocked this shift, too. Last year, Loewe went viral for launching a meme-inspired £3,000 clutch bag resembling a tomato. Last month, Londoners could sample the brand’s pistachio ice cream collab with the trendy wine-and-ice-cream bar The Dreamery. In 2023, Jacquemus sent out embossed butter in place of an enveloped fashion show invite; the same year, Burberry partnered with upmarket greasy spoon Norman’s Café for a two-week pop-up. 

In the beauty world, Hailey Bieber’s brand Rhode has used croissants, raspberries and syrupy pancakes as backdrops for selling lip products – all familiar, everyday foods, refashioned as status symbols. The ordinary has been made exclusive. 

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But M&S thrives because it has precisely the opposite effect. It invites us all to feel a little bit posh via the extremely mundane act of grocery shopping. Houses, holidays and £3,000 tomato clutch bags may seem wildly unaffordable, but you can still grasp at the good life with a cheeky payday splurge in the food hall, microdosing the unbridled luxury that fills your feed. 

Yes, it’s still more expensive than Aldi. That’s kind of the point. M&S is in the business of selling socially sanctioned guilty pleasures: sweets you know you shouldn’t eat; class signifiers you know you shouldn’t care about. As traditional markers of middle-class stability crumble under the weight of inflation and wage stagnation, the food hall remains a haven where we can comfortably cosplay a lifestyle that increasingly feels out of reach. 

In Turner’s latest TikTok video, she announced the relaunch of four discontinued chocolate bars from the 1980s, alongside a new variation of Percy Pigs – nostalgia and innovation, sitting side by side on shelves, doing their bit to restore national pride. Then, she heads to the M&S Archive in Leeds, which, she reminds us, makes for a lovely free day out if you’re in the area. 

But who needs that when the Great British fantasy is already waiting at your local M&S branch? Go on, treat yourself. Fill your Union Jack bag with picky bits and pretend that everything is fine, that social mobility still exists, that happiness can be found in confectionery. Prime ministers may come and go, but Percy Pig is forever.