Surplus Food With A Side Of Banter

Bags so heavy people bring trolleys. And a volunteer team laughing so much they come home with aching faces. That’s the reality behind this chat with Geoff, a former military medic and civil servant who’s found a second family through The Bread and Butter Thing. 

We talk about Geoffs years in the military, travelling with different regiments, and what it’s like to step into a new routine after service and retirement. From there, the story turns local. 

How Geoff first heard about the community food club through a neighbour, why he started coming along, and how volunteering at the hub became a highlight of the week. You’ll hear what makes this affordable food scheme feel different, not just the surplus food saved from supermarkets, farms, and factories, but the dignity, warmth, and neighbour-to-neighbour care that keeps people coming back. 

We also get practical about the UK cost of living crisis and the real value inside those bags, plus the behind-the-scenes logistics of packing, weighing, and getting food safely to members. And then we will discuss the problems of bags.

Transcript

Welcome To Bread And Butter

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Hello and welcome back to a slice of bread and butter, the podcast from the bread and butter thing with me, Mark and Vic.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

We run mobile food clubs that take surplus food from supermarkets, farms and factories and get it straight into communities where families are working hard to make ends meet.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

But bread and butter has never been about just the bags. It's about the people, it's about neighbours having a natter, volunteers mucking in and families trying something new for tea and communities looking after each other.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yeah, that's what keeps us at it. Bags full of food, a brew, an atta, and people looking out for each other. Nothing too fancy, just stuff that really

Meet Jeff And His Military Years

SPEAKER_01 0:43

matters.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Yeah, and today we're talking to Jeff. What did you do in the military?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I was a medic in the medical corps, but I spent most of my time with different regiments, hence going to Iraq and Afghanistan in the early years in the 80s, with Marines, guards, Gurkhas. My happiest days was three and a half years with a parachute regiment. Did an awful lot of travelling. Cyprus, Norway, Italy, Germany, Spain. So I did 20 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

So you went straight from school to military then? Yeah. 16?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

18. Well, 17 and a half. Um yeah, it was good fun. I was a lot a lot slender, a lot beefier. Not more of that was a sort of like round here.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Um it's just moved, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, yeah, it's gravity.

Civil Service Work And Medals

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Uh yeah, so uh joined the civil service, um, spent 13 years with them. I went into the security aspect of it, uh for fraud and theft by staff. They would open up an account, a fake customer account, and they would For benefits or benefits, all sorts, different different things, because it was the the Department of Debt Management, which later became shared services, which included Job Centre Plus, Finance, the people that would buy all our stationery and equipment and things like that. I decided to retire. I thought no, I've had enough of this. Uh I can retire early. I've done the years to get my pension. I get my military pension, so I'm quite comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

There's a few medals as well. Oh, yeah. Are they yours?

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah, they're mine. Yeah. Uh Northern Ireland did three tours of Ireland during the Troubles. The middle one's the Gulf War, and the end one is the long service good conduct that you get after uh 18 years.

Finding The Hub And Volunteering

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Okay, so how did you find bread and butter?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Uh it was through a neighbour who m no longer lives here. She she moved well away, and uh she said, you'll have to go sometime, it's up at the scout hut. Uh this is when it was at the scout hut because it's now at the cricket club. I went, alright, okay, yeah. I'll I'll go up. So um I never made it on the Friday because it was every Friday, but I went up to the Scout Club anyway, and I bumped into Kate, who was the team leader. We just started chatting and she said, Well, with your experience in civil service and the military, especially the military, why don't you join the scouts to become a leader? And I thought, I'll think about that. And eventually did, and I did two and a half years with them. I then thought I thought, right, I'm going to start volunteering for the bread and butter thing. I ended up being a um a customer uh for a couple of times, but now why uh all I do is I order it just in case somebody tried to order but couldn't, and then they can have my bag so that way it's nothing's getting wasted. And uh we have some fun when we're unloading the banter between all of us, it is hilarious. It's many a time I've had to rush to the loo to because I'm gonna wing myself because I'm laughing so hard, you know, and uh they're all different characters, especially some of the ladies. We just all click fabulously as a team, and if anybody needs any help, all they have to do is just shout out and we'll help out without question. We have some young volunteers occasionally as well. Geraldine has her grandson uh who's doing his GCSEs at the minute. Uh he comes and I've said that uh I'm quite happy to write him a reference uh for when he gets you know when it's time to get a job. But yeah, as I say, we it it's it's part of the community now, and everybody looks

Food Prices And What Members Get

SPEAKER_00 4:55

forward to it.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

So what jumps to mind has gone up the most day to day?

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Since when was a litre of milk one pound ninety, you know, in some places, and you think, oh god, uh where they can get depending on what's what's on offer. I mean, last week there was steak, chops, bacon, and something else, and because you know, the three bags they get a cooler bag, a veg bag, and then a sundries bag. Some weeks it's absolutely fantastic, and we mark it, we all once it's everything's packed, they get one bag of each, and then Dan takes it out to weigh them and then photograph them and then calls the everybody around to give it marks out of ten. We very rarely go below seven.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

It's just that camaraderie, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

I'm really happy to be part of it. It's it's um it highlights because we we spread the word around that there is the bread and butter thing. If you can't make it to the cricket club, there's another one at in such and such, or there's another one down uh Chester Road at the the church. They used to do one at Lost Stock, well they couldn't use the school in holiday times, so they would bag up everything and just deliver it from the van, which became quite hectic when you've got 160 to 270 bags of mixed stuff, quite difficult, especially if there's few helpers as well.

Heavy Bags, Spillages, And Logistics

SPEAKER_02 6:23

I always found the hardest thing with that, Jeff, was uh because they're all the same colour bag.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there's many a time, depending on where they they get the bags from, the actual seal at the bottom has not been properly sealed. So if you've got say five or six pounds of potatoes and a bag of carrots, a bag of sprouts, da da da da da da, and you pick it up and it goes all over the floor. And it's happened to me a few times, you know, and you think, oh god, you don't want it to happen to a customer.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Yeah, and it's really interesting because plastic bags we want to engineer them out of the system, right? But trying to find a recycled, compostable, that type of carrier bag that can take that weight.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yeah, exactly. I mean you can, but the costly. When uh they started doing the bagless, when they initiated that, it went well, it went really well for the first three or four weeks. We were getting up to twenty, eighteen, seventeen, back to eighteen again, and we were getting that, but now it's tailored right off. It's totally lucky if we get two or three in a week. Last week we didn't have any. I tend to do the bagless and the singles. Yeah. Soon as I find out who, what, why, where, and when, straight away I'll start packing them up so I can get them into the back of the van so they can put cooler stuff in there and it stays there. Then that's the way it works. But yeah, it's it's it's great. It's a cracking little social hub, not just for the members, as in the customers. For the helpers, we have such a laugh. It's very rare we don't have a good good time. There's many a time I've come back with sour sides because I've laughed so much, you know. Yeah, it's it's good fun, I enjoy it. I really do enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

So, our community volunteers.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

They like a banter, don't they?

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah. I love it though. I mean you go into all the different hubs and it's like it's like a family, you know, like 160 different families when you go into the hubs, and they've just all got their own little jobs and all got their own little ways of working, and they're in jokes that they don't share, they don't explain them.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

So it's the only time I've ever seen Patrick Butler have a bit of a giggle.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02 8:54

When it took him to St. Peter's and he spent a couple of hours there and he just turned him and he's really tall, Patrick.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

And this hub leader crooks in it as high as you can. He goes, Who the bloody hell are you then?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

I love it. We're not saying that Patrick's like normally not fun.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

No, no, no, not at all. But he he was coming to do a full piece on it, so which he did, and it was fantastic. But it was just it was nice because he came back and he was like, you know, I've never had this much fun and engagement at a food club, food bank, or whatever. And he always said, you know, everybody's got their head down and gives you eye contact. Not this. Yeah, it's the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Our uh volunteers are definitely feisty, but you know, I love that because it's theirs, they own it.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Yeah. And I love the fact that they have a giggle. And Trina was saying it the other week as well. So, you know, go away, my face is aching because I've been laughing that much.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah, which is yeah, it's Brill. And we couldn't do it without our community volunteers. 183,000 hours a year they give us.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Whoa. And growing that out.

Plastic Bag Problem And How To Help

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Shall we have the painful conversation about plastic bags?

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Oh, okay then.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Because we've tried stuff, haven't we?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah, it's really hard. You tried the bag for lives years ago, didn't you?

SPEAKER_02 10:07

I did, and they didn't come back in a good condition. Let's just leave it at that.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Okay. And then with Baglas, we can do a few, and Flixton piloted that for us. Yeah. And we can do a few, but you've got to then have a load of crates. It's a space for the crates, isn't it? And it's the space. So you can't just do that. It's really tricky. And then also we try and keep everything just quite plain. So you could have gone to your local corner shop or whatever, so that if people didn't want to say they'd come to bread and butter for any reason, that's okay. Although lots of people still come with trolleys because the bags are so heavy.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

They do.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

So they bring the little granny trolley, even if they're not a granny.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

And ram the bags in that.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

But by all means, if anybody's got any bright ideas, do send us some of your ideas to podcast at breadandbutthing.org. I love that plug. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Yeah, could you imagine if we charged for bags though as well?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

It wouldn't go down well.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

No.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

But again, the ones that we get are reusable and maybe we should ask our members in the survey how long they keep them and what they do with them, etc.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

So I turn up to Jeff's and I felt like I I was in a memorabilia place, right? So he had original albums of David Bowie's, a 1970s poster that was framed, an original poster of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I could have stayed for hours. I could have stayed for hours.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Oh right. Okay. No no pets though.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

No.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

You've broken your trend.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Yeah, but not next week because Michaela's next. And I I've gone worse with Michaela, so if you'd like to know more about the bread and bust thing or what we get up to, you can find us at Team TBBT on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and on LinkedIn or online at breadandbutterthing.org. I did that quite slickly.

unknown 12:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

And if you've got any not the first time.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

I know. And if you've any feedback or thoughts on the podcast or would like to come and be our guest, drop us an email at podcast at breadandbutterthing.org.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

And we're 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_01 12:23

And please do all the things that podcasts ask you to do. Like us, subscribe, leave a review, share us with your friends, and chat about us on social.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

See ya!