Warburtons

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's, Barr's, and Walker's.

The company donated £25,000 to the Conservative Party in 2010, and staged one of David Cameron's 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".