Branded tote bags, once a generic marker of eco-consciousness, have become a shorthand for taste, identity and even social status. A simple canvas bag can now signal anything from literary credibility to international supermarket savvy, as seen in the rise of totes from US chains such as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods in UK cities.
Where a tote might previously have been a free add-on with a large purchase, it is now treated as a personal statement. Designs from Daunt Books, Shakespeare and Company, the London Review of Books, the New Yorker or Fitzcarraldo Editions suggest a reading habit, while also risking charges of predictability. A Mubi-branded bag can mark its owner out as a self-conscious cinephile. Online culture, with its focus on categorising people into types and tribes, has turned these everyday items into visible markers of affiliation.
The shift has spread well beyond established brands. Independent bakeries, cafes and local shops are increasingly producing their own merchandise, from clothing to novelty items, as a way to extend their presence beyond their premises.
In north London, bakery Jolene sells not only tote bags but branded hats, socks, scarves and even oilskins. At St John, diners can buy tea towels, T-shirts, engraved waiter’s friends and pig-shaped pin badges to commemorate a meal. High-street bakery chain Greggs has partnered with Primark on a line that includes bum bags, shoes and cycling shorts, alongside a jewellery collection featuring 22-carat gold-plated sausage roll earrings and a signet ring priced at £48. Yard Sale Pizza offers a football-style scarf for fans of its slice shops.
Some collaborations are more unexpected. Camberwell’s Toad Bakery produced what it described as the world’s first bakery-branded condoms as a Valentine’s Day stunt. Owner Oliver Costello said the limited-edition “toad in the hole” condoms were kept deliberately low-key, with all proceeds donated to charity, and that the bakery does not struggle for attention given the queues outside its doors.
For Toad and similar businesses, the main driver is demand. Merchandise such as T-shirts and caps has repeatedly sold out, as customers travel specifically to visit talked-about bakeries and want something more lasting than a pastry to show for the trip. Costello compares this to buying a T-shirt at a gig: a way to represent a favourite venue elsewhere.
The economics differ from those of musicians, for whom merch often represents a crucial revenue stream in the streaming era. For bakeries, sandwich shops, wine bars and other small establishments, branded goods typically bring in modest income and do not dramatically alter the balance sheet. But they can deepen loyalty, generate word-of-mouth marketing and help a place stand out online and on the street.
At Toad, the T-shirts worn by staff are also sold to customers, and the bakery plans to collaborate with local artists on new designs. Its caps are embroidered in nearby Deptford, making the merchandise a vehicle for neighbourhood identity as well as brand-building. Wearing the logo of a Camberwell business, for instance, can signal postcode pride or allegiance to SE5 over SE10, and beyond that, to one side of a city over another.
In other cities, local favourites are following a similar path. In one Sydney neighbourhood, a popular convenience store now sells T-shirts featuring a cartoon of the owner’s face. Customers buy them not just for novelty, but to show support for his outspoken pro-Palestine politics and distinctive social media presence.
Merch is relatively low-risk for small businesses. Bulk orders can be inexpensive — one estimate puts 150 custom tote bags at about £5 each, to be sold at roughly twice that price. According to a report in The Times, a single customer at Daunt Books spent £120 on totes. Even when the numbers are smaller, the visibility provided when customers wear or carry these products can function as ongoing advertising.
Hackney-founded sandwich shop Dom’s Subs illustrates how far this can go. Launched during the pandemic, it quickly found that T-shirts and other branded items were a useful way for customers to show support during a difficult trading period. Co-founder Dom Sherington describes the merchandise as “great advertising” as well as an additional income source.
In 2021, Dom’s Subs partnered with workwear brand Carhartt on a limited-run T-shirt, after regularly supplying sandwiches to the Carhartt office in Hackney Wick. The shirts sold out within minutes, and some have been listed for resale at prices of around £300, according to Sherington. For the business, merch has become a significant revenue stream, although managing it alongside day-to-day operations remains challenging for a small team.
The wider trend reflects the pressure on even the smallest businesses to behave like brands, not just service providers. Selling coffee, sandwiches or pastries now often comes with an expectation of a recognisable visual identity, Instagram-friendly moments and products that can extend that brand into customers’ wardrobes and homes.
At the same time, the enthusiasm for merch highlights consumer behaviour in a saturated market. One entrepreneurially minded shopper returned from the US with multiple Trader Joe’s tote bags, hoping to resell them on platforms such as Vinted, only to find the resale market already crowded. The bags are at least, he noted, practical and spacious.
Critics see a downside. While branded goods can offer a relatively easy win, they are also a distraction from the core product or service and a reminder of the constant pressure on small operators to diversify just to stay viable. For customers, buying a T-shirt or tote may serve as a shortcut to a sense of taste, connection or community that is harder to cultivate in everyday life.
It can feel safer to gift someone a tote from a cult bookshop than to choose a book they might genuinely love, and more straightforward to buy a cap from a local cafe than to invest time building relationships there. In that sense, the boom in merch is about more than tote bags and novelty condoms: it is a window into how branding, identity and consumer culture now intertwine in the most ordinary corners of daily life.