A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
Corned Beef Mountains
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£8.50 doesn’t go far at the supermarket right now, but in a community food club it can become a proper weekly shop and a moment of relief.
Carol talks candidly about the point she noticed the change. Not overnight, but gradually, until the bank balance dipped and the overdraft became normal. We get into the real-world details behind “the bills have gone up” from rent and service charges to heating, water and the small costs that chip away at a budget. We also explore how pension credit can unlock extra support, including a social tariff that cuts broadband costs, and we ask a bigger question about digital life: when do you genuinely need the internet, and when is it just another pressure?
Food runs through it all, from a surprise surplus haul of corned beef to the creativity it takes to waste less and share more. We challenge myths about household food waste, track eye-watering price rises in everyday staples like coffee, and talk about what fuel surcharges could mean for food inflation. Through it all, we explain why we’re focused on keeping our member prices steady, even when our costs rise.
Subscribe for more honest conversations about surplus food, affordable food schemes and community support, then share the episode, leave a review, and tell us: what price rise has hit you the hardest?
Welcome And The Food Clubs
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome back to a slice of bread and butter with me, Mark, and Vic. We're from the Bread and Butter Think.
SPEAKER_00We run a network of mobile food clubs that take surplus food from supermarkets, farms and factories. We take it straight into communities where families are struggling to get by.
SPEAKER_02For less than a tenner, our members get bags packed with fruit, veg, fridge food, and cupboard staples. It's a weekly shop that helps stretch the budget and take some of the pressure off.
SPEAKER_00Our members are at the heart of everything we do. They turn food into friendship and neighbours into community. And that's what makes us tick.
SPEAKER_02It is. And today we're going to talk to Carol from Staley Bridge.
SPEAKER_01Being on a state pension. And so a friend told me about the bread and butter.
SPEAKER_02Where do you go?
SPEAKER_01The Ridge Hill Hub, which is in the Old Baptist Church on Amble Side there. And I'm very happy with what I'm getting for£8.50.
SPEAKER_02Great. So tell me a bit about you then. So obviously retired, what did you used to do?
SPEAKER_01I was uh in caring for older people for 20 odd years before I retired. Thought I was providing a valuable service, and so I've got the greatest respect for the bread and butter because they're helping the community dealing with food waste as well.
SPEAKER_02So have you had any weird and wonderful things?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I've had some very weird things.
SPEAKER_02Do share.
SPEAKER_01The weirdest thing I've had was a very large amount of corned beef. Which I thought I'd never use up in them on the Sundays, but I shared it with my children. I have seven children. The youngest two are in the 30s, and of course they're bringing up young children now, so they struggle the same as me with buying food to last the week.
SPEAKER_02Corn beef though, I mean there's a story in that, isn't there?
SPEAKER_01It's so versatile corned beef, isn't it? And it's a good job, really.
SPEAKER_02Bit of corned beef hash, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Corn beef hash, corned beef pie, whatever you can turn it into.
SPEAKER_02Did your kids even know what corned beef is?
SPEAKER_01It's not something that they buy regularly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They don't m cook like we used to cook. They eat a lot of pasta and pizza, things like that.
SPEAKER_02Pasta stretches though.
SPEAKER_01Quite healthy, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02A lot of people are saying nowadays that we all waste too much food at home. From what you're telling me, it doesn't sound like you do.
SPEAKER_01No, I use everything. If I can't use it, I share it.
SPEAKER_02So do you think your kids waste?
SPEAKER_01No, I don't think so. Because they do live near the knuckle, you know, with having children.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I get it. This is one of the things people are saying, is it's just like it doesn't matter whether you've got money or haven't got money, and if you're near the knuckle, it doesn't matter, you still waste food. But I I don't think that's true.
SPEAKER_01No, I don't. And if I do have a bit of meat left over, which I can't eat on my plate, then I feed a fox outside. Usually I buy it chicken wings, to be honest.
SPEAKER_02Hang on, so this is a person that's going to bread and butter because they're near the knuckle themselves, and yeah, they're buying chicken wings for a fox. How does that work?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm a bit daft, I suppose, but when it looks at me with those eyes, I just think, poor thing, you know.
Living On A Pension Budget
SPEAKER_02Hmm. So because you said at the beginning that kind of cost of living's biting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Did it happen overnight? Has it been a gradual thing?
SPEAKER_01Did you wake up and I didn't notice it until my bank balance started getting lower and I was needing to go on my overdraft.
SPEAKER_02And how long ago do you think that bank balance started feeling like that?
SPEAKER_01Oh I'd say about twelve months ago. Because the bills have gone up as well.
SPEAKER_02Which bills have gone up for you then?
SPEAKER_01Well, everything. The water, the rent, the gas.
SPEAKER_02Do you get the winter fuel allowance?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I get that. That is a big help.
SPEAKER_02And what about the rent? Social landlord?
SPEAKER_01It's under 500, just about. But then we have a service charge to pay on top.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Which is 44 a month, 11 pounds a week. And that covers the gardening, the window cleaning, the cleaner which comes in to see to the communal areas. The service charges bump it up to about 550. But we do get it subsidised.
SPEAKER_02So how do you um keep in touch with kids and grandkids and things?
SPEAKER_01Mobile phone. They message me all day long usually. They lean on me a lot. The younger ones. Emotional support. Wondering what they should do about this, that, and the other.
Cutting Bills With Social Tariffs
SPEAKER_02So it sounds like you're even though you're retired, do you mind me asking, do you get just state pension or have you got yourself a pension?
SPEAKER_01I've got a guaranteed pension credit on with that.
SPEAKER_02Okay, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01That means I can get a lot of other benefits besides. Right. Like I get my BT cheaper.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's nice.
SPEAKER_01The internet went up to like£42 a month. So I rang them and I said I just can't afford this anymore. So they've put me on what they call a social service. Yeah. Which you have to renew every 12 months. And that's£23 a month, but never goes up. Stays at that price. Previously it went up each year, maybe one or two pounds.
SPEAKER_0242 quid a lot.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And all I've got is Wi-Fi often. Yeah, yeah. I've no house phone because that's another extra.
SPEAKER_02That's another extra, isn't it? Yeah. So all you get is the internet and the Wi-Fi, as you say.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then you use your mobile.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And what and what do you use it for, the internet?
SPEAKER_01It's to work with my phone mainly, because I don't do this streaming.
SPEAKER_02You just watch everything on preview or whatever.
SPEAKER_01I just find there's quite a lot on preview. At the moment there is. We've got Mars.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the interrupted Frost. Sorry about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but uh yeah, I do like Frost. And Morse. But that's just finished.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Where they've killed him off and spoilers. It's just horrible when they bring Endeavour on. Yeah. You know. And it does relate, doesn't it? Yeah. Because Endeavour has the same traits.
SPEAKER_02He does.
SPEAKER_01He drives a jag and he's got blue eyes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, he does a lot of internal in as well, doesn't he? That emotionally kind of guarded and keeps everything to himself.
SPEAKER_01And can't stick to one woman. Things like that.
SPEAKER_02I've never I've never taken Morris as a womaniser.
SPEAKER_01No, not a womaniser. Just look he just likes intelligent women.
SPEAKER_02Well, don't we all?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So we talked about your youngest. What about the rest of them?
SPEAKER_01Well, I have children in the 50s as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They're accomplished. I don't hear much from them other than if they want to take me out for lunch or whatever. My second eldest daughter is doing the London Marathon.
SPEAKER_02Nice.
SPEAKER_01For um Macmillan. Yeah. Because we lost my father in the year 2000. And grandad was meant a lot to them.
SPEAKER_02So it's just your little one that you look after?
SPEAKER_01Mainly it's the little ones. The others look after me quite a lot. That's nice. They'll ring me up and say, Are you alright, mum? And do you need anything? And I always say no because they've got children they need to provide for.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I always say no, I'm fine. Unless I want them to mountaineer and pull my curtains down or whatever, and I'm a bit frightened of getting up the ladders now.
What Counts As A Luxury
SPEAKER_02Get that. Something I ask quite a lot of people is what would you say nowadays you would think is a luxury that pre-COVID, should we say, used to be like an everyday thing for you?
SPEAKER_01Well, quite a few things actually.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I like coffee and that's gone up terrible.
SPEAKER_02So do you do you still have coffee or have you do you buy a cheaper?
SPEAKER_01I'll still have it. I only like one brand you've seen, that's Nest Cafe. Yeah. For a large jar of coffee now it's£7.25 in Tesco.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01And it is everywhere else, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But Aldi has to price match with Tesco.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. What do you think it used to cost you?
SPEAKER_01Pre COVID it was about two pounds something.
SPEAKER_02Right, so it's nearly three times as much now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's a lot.
SPEAKER_01It's a lot. Try and make it last as long as possible.
SPEAKER_02And how long does it last you?
SPEAKER_01About a fortnight. It's not too bad. Yeah, I think it's the meat and the fish that have gone up astronomic in price.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And like I say, I don't buy a lot of meat, only the chicken for the fox.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't know that she said the butchers, but Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02You're right. I've leapt to butchers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that made it sound even more extravagant. Well, you know, we've all got our quirks.
SPEAKER_02We do, we do. And speaking of quirks, I almost felt like I needed a deep dive on the uh broadband service, right? Because she was paying 42 quid and now she's on a social tariff, and I'm doing that in inverted commas social tariff of uh roughly half that now. But all she does is she doesn't stream at all and she just puts her phone and Wi-Fi at home. I'm not even sure she needs an internet connection. All she watches on TV is free view.
SPEAKER_00Do you not need it for free view?
SPEAKER_02No, not at all.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I don't watch real tele.
SPEAKER_02That's all that Carol watches, traditional tell. Yeah. I've seen a few people do it, and in fact, my brother Chris does it. They put tele on in the background as a company during the day.
SPEAKER_00I can see that, not wanting to be in silence, just having the noise.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's it's hard, isn't it? Because who's there saying to Carol, really, do you need this?
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Have you thought about this other option? Feels like you know, it's kind of forced on everyone, isn't it? Well, you've got to have the internet. And actually, in most cases, we're arguing that people do need the internet, and maybe Carol's kind of a bit of an exception.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. But yeah, I like a bit of Morse and a bit of frost, personally. Proper old school. Definitely brought up on those.
SPEAKER_00I mean, you two were getting like into the detail.
SPEAKER_02I left it with an Inspector Lindley recommendation.
SPEAKER_00Wow, I've never heard of Inspector Lindley.
SPEAKER_02They're good books as well, just just for the record. In fact, I'd say the books are better.
SPEAKER_00The books are always better.
SPEAKER_02True.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So corned beef then.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that was a staple in my childhood, corned beef.
SPEAKER_00Is that what made you a veggie?
SPEAKER_02So get get this, Vic. Mum would buy two ounces of corned beef and make a corned beef hash for six of us from it.
SPEAKER_00Um what's an ounce?
SPEAKER_02Oh god, right. I don't know the conversion to it. I'm gonna have to Google that.
SPEAKER_00I only know grams.
SPEAKER_02It's 28 grams in an ounce, so 56 grams.
SPEAKER_00Like absolutely no corned beef then.
SPEAKER_02Two slices effectively. Wow.
SPEAKER_00You certainly didn't have the uh what was it, two kilograms or something?
SPEAKER_02That would have been a challenge, but credit to her. She managed.
SPEAKER_00Again, the sharing and the uh creativity. You can make a pie, you can make a hash.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'd never heard of corned beef pie.
SPEAKER_02Well, I guess it's you can put any meat in a pie, right? Because it just goes in a bit of a sauce and sorted.
SPEAKER_00I guess so. But this is where our members are better than we are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely, definitely. And going back to food waste as well, I I think Carol was on the money and and she was definitely reckoning that her family were not food wasters. I know last week we talked about generational food waste. She was not on the same page. She was like, no, no, no, we don't waste.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it was Carol that was saying that the family's to the knuckle, yeah, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. And I've never heard that phrase before, but I knew exactly what it meant.
SPEAKER_02Near the knuckle, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh and it's true, you know, if you can't afford food, then you're not going to waste food. Makes total sense to me.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And that's why we'll just have to keep pushing rap and get that work done.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've got some ideas. The other thing that made me think about last week as well is we were talking then about how do you know when it's time to shop with bread and butter? And it's like we don't talk about people going into their overdraft. We've not really discussed this very much. And I was like, well, obviously, but wouldn't that be a good sign that actually, oh, I'm nipping in my overdraft, I could go to bread and butter. Yeah. And not be in your overdraft for 12 months before you think, oh, now I need to get there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And that's kind of what she was doing, right? She was saying, got a routine, this is what I'm buying, but suddenly everything that I was buying is now making me go in my overdraft. Something's wrong.
Coffee Prices Inflation And Fuel Surcharges
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and like coffee.
SPEAKER_02Oh, well, you see, I I had to Google coffee. So I found this great site, and I'm I'm sure there'll be people out there going, Oh god, you haven't found this sign, it's been there decades, Mark. Camel Camel Camel, right?
SPEAKER_00What what is this?
SPEAKER_02Camel Camel Camel tracks Amazon prices for food since Amazon started, right? So I looked at the Nescafe coffee that she was talking about just to see. So back in June 2020, that jar of coffee that she was talking about was£2 on Amazon.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02Six years ago it was two pounds. Current price,£6.75. So it's more than tripled in price in six years.
SPEAKER_00I mean, we see it everywhere, but it's interesting to just do that deep dive onto one thing and say, and how do you know about camel, camel, camel? And who on earth called their website that?
SPEAKER_02I don't know, but I'm sure there'll be uh others in in a very BBC type way. There will be other comparative and historic trendy websites.
SPEAKER_00This is my evening now going down a rabbit hole.
SPEAKER_02I wouldn't, I'd be careful. It is a rat hole. You can lose time in that website.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Yeah. I mean, food prices have continually grown year on year, haven't they?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and we've talked about that a lot, right? But we haven't necessarily for things like tea and coffee, right?
SPEAKER_00No, that's true. But I also think that they're potentially gonna go up again, which is kind of worrying, right? Because they're already high and people already can't afford.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know they're gonna, you know, everybody's signaling it already. Food inflation was starting to normalize. It's just not gonna now.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_02Because all of the hauliers are gonna start putting fuel surcharges on everything they do.
SPEAKER_00We got that letter today.
SPEAKER_02There you go. Yeah. And that's what's gonna happen. That surcharge, it will end up on your food, it'll end up in any deliveries that you get from anywhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Everything's just gonna get expensive again and inflation's gonna go one direction and it's not down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But you know, while inflation's been going up, bread and butter prices haven't been going up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I know. I I think you should explain.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's really important. Like, we're trying to help people stretch their budgets. So if we put our prices up.
SPEAKER_02But our prices have gone up, our costs have gone up, Victor.
SPEAKER_00Oh, massively. Yeah. So we're just working harder behind the scenes to make sure that we can carry on delivering for everyone. And we'll continue to do that. Because us putting our prices up right now doesn't feel like the right thing to do, does it? It feels like counterproductive for everybody.
SPEAKER_02No, because we tend to have this conversation annually, don't we, with the board?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I'm the one that's going in saying, I really don't want to do it. We can't do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we just work harder. But yeah, we got our first letter today about the uh Middle East fuel prices and the surcharge. So I'm waiting for other holyers to uh I was gonna say it won't be the last. No. I know, sadly.
SPEAKER_02So if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, you can find us at Team TBBT on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, on LinkedIn or online at breadandbutterthing.org.
SPEAKER_00And if you've got any feedback or thoughts on the podcast, or you'd like to come and be our guest, drop us an email at podcast at breadandbutthing.org.
SPEAKER_02And we are always open to new members at all of our hubs, so if you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, you can find your nearest hub on the Become a Member pages of our website.
SPEAKER_00And please do all those things that podcasts asks you to do. Like us, subscribe, leave us a review, share us with your friends, and chat about us on social.
SPEAKER_02And we'll see you next time.
SPEAKER_00See ya.
