Only Curls and Warburtons have launched a limited-edition hair gel, "Crust & Curl Defining Gel", the aroma of warm toast.

The premise is built on the long-standing saying that eating bread crusts makes your hair go curly.

The campaign drew on a YouGov survey of 2,122 UK adults and the numbers make this an obvious collaboration. Of those who had heard the crusts saying, 39% believed it to be true when they were children. Some 22% still associate eating crusts with curly hair as adults. A quarter of those who heard it as children have since repeated it to a child of their own.

For context, the saying ranked among the most commonly recalled childhood food beliefs: 89% of respondents had heard that carrots help you see in the dark, 81% that sitting too close to the television causes square eyes, 67% that spinach makes you strong, and 62% that eating crusts produces curly hair.

Jonathan Warburton, who runs the business alongside family members Brett and Ross, noted that the saying was passed down through his own family. Only Curls founder Lizzie Carter, who started the brand in 2016 with a microfibre hair towel, described the collaboration as taking the old wives' tale seriously.

The gel is designed to create a strong cast, enhance curl definition and add volume, with the bakery scent as its distinguishing feature.

What makes this cross-category move notable is what it incidentally demonstrates about Warburtons' cultural reach. The company operates 11 bakeries and 16 depots across Britain, delivers to 18,500 retail customers daily with a fleet of nearly 1,000 vehicles, and carries around 70 product lines. A brand presence built over nearly 150 years is evidently robust enough to stretch into adjacent consumer territory.

For other industrial bakers, the research confirms something useful: bread and the domestic rituals and sayings surrounding it, remains embedded in British everyday life in ways that advertising alone could not manufacture.