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
Sea Coal, Steep Hills, Strong Hearts
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A neighbour shares a spare roast chicken and suddenly a whole world opens up. That’s how Margaret, a proud Hartlepool local with three feisty dogs and a lifetime of stories, found our hyper-local food hub. What follows is a candid journey through love and loss, the reality of disability, and a fierce independence that once powered fifteen years of life on boats, sea coal fires glowing while snow fell outside.
We explore why proximity is as important as price. For Margaret, a five-minute ride on a mobility scooter is the difference between agency and exhaustion, especially when a single shop can mean £12 in taxi fares. That’s where The Bread and Butter Thing lands: predictable, nearby, and human. Around the hub table, food turns into friendship and gossip becomes a planning tool; four boxes of tomatoes become soup, sauces, and neighbourly swaps that keep waste near zero.
From there we take on the slippery word everyone uses but no one defines: affordable. We question whether averages tell the truth when our members often spend a far higher share of income on food. We float a clear yardstick and match the price of good calories to cheap calories and weigh it against the lived detail of access, range, and choice. Along the way we challenge received wisdom on household food waste, recalling research that links planning and fair pricing to lower waste, and asking for new data that actually reflects underrepresented households.
Threaded through is the tech that keeps Margaret connected. Her iPad is more than a gadget; it’s banking without a taxi, FaceTime with grandkids in Copenhagen, and company on quiet days between the hub and the boat club. By the end, the case is simple: build food systems that are close, dignified, and measured by what people can truly reach and use. Listen for courage at sea, for laughter about scooter batteries on steep hills, and for a practical path to define affordability with the people who live it.
If this story resonates, follow and subscribe for more member voices, share it with a friend who cares about food access, and leave a review with your take on what “affordable” should mean.
Hello 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_02Yeah, and for less than a 10 of our members get bags packed with fruit, veg, fridge food, and cupboard staples. It's a weekly shop that helps stretch the budgets 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_02Yeah, and today is Margaret from Hartleypool. Let's have a listen.
SPEAKER_03Live in Hartleypool. I've got the three dogs, Charlie, George and Betty.
SPEAKER_02Which are no doubt going to contribute at some point to this.
SPEAKER_03They'll be alright as long as nobody knocks on the door or tries to come to the house. My partner died 14 months ago. We were together 13 years. And prior to that, I was married for the second time. I met my husband in the September. We were married in the January, and he died two years later with cancer.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_03And I was married first time, 20 years old, and got divorced after 10 years, and I brought two kids up on my own. My daughter was four and my son was eight years old. And obviously the kids are all grown up now. Oh, yeah. Where are they? My son lives in Doncaster. He he'll be 59 this year. My daughter lives in York and she's 54. And I have two granddaughters. One lives in Copenhagen at the moment. She has a PhD. I'm not quite sure what it's in, but it's something to do with politics, constitutional politics. Wow. And the other one, I can't remember which university she went to, but she works for Tesco's as a buyer for fruit and veg. So have you got friends here? Next door neighbours, that's and there's a fella down the street I talk to occasionally. You know, just hello. And a friend that's known for about 25 years. Found out he lives in the same street just further down the road.
SPEAKER_01It's spooky though, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But apart from that, no, I don't know anybody around and about.
SPEAKER_02So I guess these three are your companies.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02As you can probably hear them, it's not me snuffling, it's it's it's it's these three sniffling. So what what have we got? We've got a chihuahua, a what was it, a Yorkie and a chihuahua?
SPEAKER_03Yorkie. Cross with the chihuahua and a chihuahua that's quarter Japanese chin. Yeah. Which I'd never heard of till we got her and then looked looked up what a Japanese chin was.
SPEAKER_01So that it doesn't sound like you meet many people then.
SPEAKER_03No, because I'm disabled if to go out I have to use me mobility scooter, that's why it's the shed's at the front there. I w I wonder what was in that. But I get attendance allowance to pay for taxis to go sick to all the shopping or if I need to go into Hartleport.
SPEAKER_02And you've not been using bread and butter long, but how did you find out about it?
Life, Loss, And Family Roots
SPEAKER_03My next door neighbour, she a few times she would call and say, Can you use these? And I think it was two frozen cooked chickens, and then a few weeks later she came with some fruit and veg that she couldn't use, and she told me about bread and butter. That's where she got it from. So she advised me to go on the iPad and uh register. Register. I've been going ever since. Do you use bread and butter to stretch your budget? No, not really, because I I can't I can only get Aldi for shopping. I mean the there's local shops down at the bottom there, but they sell bare minimum. It's a lot more expensive, but I have to get a taxi up to Aldi. So it's six pounds each way to for the taxi.
SPEAKER_02Six quid each way is a lot to add on to your shopping bill, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I need to go into Hartleypool uh er next week to the bank and it's£12 each way. And you say attendance allowance pays for stuff? Yeah. I get erm, I think it's about£270 a month to pay for taxis. How do you get to bread and butter then? Either the next door neighbour takes me, or if she's not going, then I go on my mobility scooter, and I can only carry two the two two bags, so I bring the two bags back and then go back and get the freezer, you know, the cold stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. How long does it take you on your scooter to get there?
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's only five minutes, it's only down the road.
SPEAKER_01You see, we're we're local and accessible.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the only problem is it's a really steep hill coming back up.
SPEAKER_02Well, it must drain your battery.
Dogs, Disability, And Daily Isolation
SPEAKER_03It does. Uh I reckon I can go to the local shops three times before the battery needs recharging. So when I went on Tuesday, because Dot wasn't going, wasn't getting it this week. So I went down and got the two bags and come back. And when I went down to get the third and bring it back up and say to the battery, you can make it, you can make it. But I had to take the battery out as soon as I got in to recharge it. Wow.
SPEAKER_02So tell me about when you get to the community hub, what's it like?
SPEAKER_03Great, just chat to people, but it's usually about the bread and butter. Are you gossiping about our food?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03What did you get last week?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. What did uh Oh it's not as good as last week.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03The other week I think there was four lots of tomatoes. Well, I'm on my own, never use up four lots of tomatoes, but say there's a man up the road there that I've known for 25 years for because we both belong to the small crafts in Hartpool. There were a club for small boat owners. And fishermen. I lived on a boat for 15 years. Did you? You say where was that in your introduction? When I got married the second time, our husband was boat mad, so we decided to buy a boat, and we lived on I think a what uh I think it was 36 foot yacht that time, but he wasn't very keen on sailing, he wanted motor, yeah, not to have to rely on the wind. So we're sticking rag as we call that and bought a 40-foot motorboat, lived on that. And how did how did it compare cost wise to living in a house? Initially it was a hell of a lot cheaper because the marina fees that you had to pay included your electricity, but then new people bought it and you had to pay your electricity separately. And fees almost doubled.
SPEAKER_02So it's swings and roundabout, so it's cheaper, but actually it comes at a cost as well.
SPEAKER_03Well, the last boat we had, we had an arga on it, which was coal fired. I don't know whether you know around here we get sea coal. We used to go down the beach, get sea coal. Craft it. Bring it back, dry it out, and then make little parcels with it, and we'd burn that. So we never had to pay for anything. And one time we were sat with all the windows and the doors open, and it was snowing, but the argo was pumping that much heat out.
SPEAKER_02Oh, your carbon footprint was off the chart.
SPEAKER_03Oh aye.
Finding TBBT Through A Neighbour
SPEAKER_01So um I can see a tablet in front of you. Is that how you stay in touch with the family?
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_01The television and my iPad are saviours. So you're relatively tech savvy then?
SPEAKER_03Er yes, I do me banking internet, but I'm very wary. How often do you see people, Margaret? Tuesday, when I go to butter. Yeah. And Wednesday night I go to the small crafts. So this is probably a lot of talking for you. You probably find I'm rambling on a bit.
SPEAKER_02No, no, you're not. I don't think people understand just how isolated I think people are at times. Yeah. Especially when you've got disabilities and you can't get out that easy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I mean I used to see more of the neighbours when I took the dogs out for a walk, but I can't take them out for a walk now because my leg and back it's too bad. So how do these three monsters get exercise then? Just out in the back garden, I'm afraid, which is one of the reasons probably why they're so excitable when anybody comes in. Well, I certainly got a greeting. Yeah, actually, it's only recently that Charlie's stopped nipping people's ankles when they come in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well that that's the reputation of a chihuahua for you, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03They're the three of them think they're out wireless.
SPEAKER_02So I gotta say, Margaret has had a life. Two marriages, one long-term partner, and life on the open waves.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Last week I think I said, and I've said it before, people talk and get really chatty when you've stopped recording. And Margaret did the same. So she told me that she had sailed across the Irish Sea in a force eight gale.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02To get one of the boats that she lived on across from Ireland. They bought it in Ireland and sailed it across. And you just think, what a woman. What a woman.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but she understands the shipping forecast.
SPEAKER_02I bet she does. Well, it doesn't sound like she listened to it that day.
SPEAKER_00Fair. Yeah, no, Margaret seems like a really interesting character. Lots of rich stories throughout her life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
The Cost Of Getting Groceries
SPEAKER_00We only got the tip of the iceberg.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure I could have stayed there hours. She was amazing and she would have been full of stories. Because the the dogs also weren't hers, they were her partners that died, but they'd become her bezzies.
SPEAKER_00Good. Well, definitely, you know, providing her with some company and stopping her from feeling so lonely and stuff, which is brilliant.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I've got a question before we move away from boats. What's sea coal?
SPEAKER_02Ah, right. So sea coal wasn't necessarily boat-related, so it's a fossil fuel. In that particular area of the northeast, there are lots of coal seams that go under the North Sea. So a lot of the mines that were actually in that area go for miles and miles under the sea. Right. All that sea coal is is seams of coal that have been washed up in the waves almost like pebbles. So on that particular coast, you can find really dark black what you think are pebbles, but actually the burnable fossil fuel, the sea coal. So all it is is actually coal that they've got from the sea.
SPEAKER_00I'm glad you said that they wash up because at some point in that explanation, I had Margaret with a scuba diving kit on.
SPEAKER_02Oh God, I wish I hadn't hitting a drink when you said that. No, not the case at all.
SPEAKER_00I'm really pleased that Margaret's neighbour uh started sharing food and then introduced us to Margaret.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, me too.
SPEAKER_00That's a win.
SPEAKER_02But that's the way it works, right? It's always viral in the community. That has always been the best way that we've had of sharing who we are and what we are. I know we do all sorts of assets for the community projects themselves and print out flyers and stuff, but it's more about people talking to each other in the community, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And the the fact that it kind of started with sharing bits of food, like I've got a roast chicken that I'm not going to be able to eat. Can you make use of it? And oh, here's some fruit and veg. And oh where are you getting this from? And you know, so I think a lot of people think that you know a lot of waste happens in the house. But here's another example of our members kind of using the community to make sure that everything, every food we give out gets eaten.
SPEAKER_02Uh, you need to get onto this. You need to get some research done.
SPEAKER_00I'm on it. We're already having those conversations.
SPEAKER_02Amazing.
SPEAKER_00And uh food waste action week is coming up. I think day one is something like making your food go further. So there's definitely some uh bread and butter themed bits that we can do to feed in.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Love a good food week.
SPEAKER_02And Margaret clearly does as well, and she's savvy with it. But the other thing that she was savvy with as well was tech. That's her lifeline to her family, right? Her iPad. Yeah, it was there in front of her, and clearly that's how she was on WhatsApp and FaceTime, and that's how she rocks.
SPEAKER_01It's fantastic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Given her age, uh her confidence levels were really high on the tech. It was it was great.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think you know, because of her disability challenges, she, you know, it's tougher to get out. She's charging a battery just to come to us to do the zipping up and down the hill.
SPEAKER_02I do know I'd have loved to a singer going, go on, you can make it.
Mobility Scooters And Steep Hills
SPEAKER_00You can Yeah, yeah, just like encouraging it and yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Visions of the community and coming out and clapping around, go on.
SPEAKER_00But you know, she was saying she comes to us on a Tuesday, and then she's got the uh the boat club on the Wednesday night, and then but they're both together, so then she might not be going out from Thursday to Tuesday, or she might not see people, so yeah, but that iPad then keeps her connected, doesn't it? It's more than an iPad, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's a connection, as you say. It's how she actually stays in touch with the family, especially with them kind of international. You know, her grandkids were across the Copenhagen and places, wasn't it? Yeah, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00They've clearly done well for themselves.
SPEAKER_02Well, she's brilliant, yeah. PhD in constitutional politics, was it?
SPEAKER_00There you go, that was it. I couldn't remember the constitutional bit. I loved it when Margaret's like, I'm not really sure what it's in. Well, it's in this, but clearly I just don't understand what that means.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it was also really interesting that Margaret was chatting about the local shops, and actually for us, her using us was hugely about access, and you know, the taxi fares, going to Aldi to keep 12 quid on top of your shop, and the local shops not really having the range that she would want, and so whilst I'm sure that Margaret's not got loads of money to spend on stuff, equally the key bit for her, the key motivator was that we were closer and that she we were five minutes in a mobility scooter if DOT wasn't available and she could zip there and back. That's a really big thing for some of our communities.
Hub Chats, Sharing, And Tomatoes
SPEAKER_02Totally. It's got to be that hyper-local solution. It's interesting because it um so a couple of things I've seen today with the Food Foundation calling out for the food strategy to incorporate uh affordability and access into the food strategy that they're working on with the government, which was fascinating because it got to recognise that and applaud that because that is really the the first bold statement about affordability that's come out calling for that. What really threw me with it was um MS were one of the supporters of that statement. Okay, and that really, really threw me because I I I'd love to know, and I might tap into a couple of my old contacts that work at MS to see whether or not they could actually elaborate on that. Because I mean, don't get me wrong, the quality is amazing, and I can see why MS is expensive relatively. So for them to be calling out for affordability as well, I'd love to understand that.
SPEAKER_00I think we've got to be careful because I think the word affordability is really subjective. So we're thinking about affordability like for our members, yeah, but that's entirely different for I don't know, let's go GP solicitor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I think it's really easy to say, yeah, food should be affordable, but are we all gonna agree on where that affordability level is? I don't think we will. So there's a real devil in the detail.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I get that. There was a suitable pause bit because I'm genuinely think feeling that one now. And trying not to be the uh bullshigate that just goes, yeah, well, we're just gonna do it, and it's gotta be cheap and it's gotta be affordable and find the right words because you're right, it's gonna be in the detail, but it it's really simple to be able to measure it to say, how about it's just gotta be the same price as the cheap calories? Because we know that there's really not good calories out there that are half the price right. So why don't we just say, well, if you can get a packet of biscuits with a thousand calories in it for 89p, well, how about we get a thousand calories of good calories for 89p?
SPEAKER_00Agree, but when you put that to MS, let's see if they'll sign up to it. Because that's an entirely different proposition. It's so easy to say, oh, in theory, we want everything to be affordable, and you know, they want stuff to be affordable for them to buy it from the farmer or from the supply chain. So they could not even be thinking about the end recipient.
SPEAKER_01Very true.
SPEAKER_00When they're saying that, they could just be saying, Yeah, we want it cheaper for us. Sorry, am I a bit too cynical? This is normally your job to be the cynical one.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, no, no. I I I've clearly thrown one in for you to bat away this time.
SPEAKER_00Great. Teamwork, eh? There is um another bit of consultation going on around the food strategy, and there's going to be some opportunities for organizations to speak to them. The food commission's doing some work. So we've putting in some written evidence to try and advocate on behalf of all of our brilliant members, and if we can get to go and speak at it, then we will.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, cool.
SPEAKER_00So we'll also be flying the access and affordability flag, obviously.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I I I think we've just done some other thinking around it as well to say, well, what is that definition of affordable? Yeah. Heard it here first, folks. There we go.
SPEAKER_00No, it it's a fair thing though, because literally I've not heard anyone try and define that.
SPEAKER_02No, me neither.
Fifteen Years Living On Boats
SPEAKER_00So maybe we should push government to start saying what does that really look like?
SPEAKER_02It will move policy thinking along for sure.
SPEAKER_00Because can you remember when we were looking at how much our members a proportion of their household income was being spent on food?
SPEAKER_01I do.
SPEAKER_00And it's a higher proportion. Was it about 30% some of our members were spending?
SPEAKER_02It was 30 plus, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then if we were thinking about someone that was earning more, they would be spending far less. And if we were to look at like, well, if an apple costs 20p, we were looking at kind of like that dynamic pricing, weren't we? To think about how much would an apple cost if it was the same proportion of your wage at different yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's the affordability dilemma that's going to start playing out.
SPEAKER_02It's fascinating as well, Vic, because you've triggered a memory in me because when I used to just talk about food waste rather than community as well, I did a lot of presentations around the value of food because globalization and everything. From the 80s onwards, as devalued food, right? So the weekly household budget post-second world war to spend on food used to be around 25%. And then up to like the 2010s, there was like a drip-drip-drip down, and it ended up around eight or nine percent. But then of course, that's averages. So those benchmarks will still be there around eight or nine percent, maybe tipped over to ten with food inflation and all the rest of it. But the sad truth is that just shows you our members are paying typically three times more, or it feels like paying three times more than your average dude. Yeah. So the argument used to be, and this is going back to the rap point, that uh there was less food waste around back in the 40s and 50s, because actually food was expensive and people would use every last bit of it. And even in the 60s and 70s, I remember as a kid everybody using leftovers and all the rest of it. But as a commodity becomes cheaper and cheaper, people waste more and more of it. That was the analogy to run with. But thinking about it now, if you run that same argument, you could say, well, then it's bloody obvious that people that are paying three times more are gonna waste less.
Sea Coal, Heat, And Making Do
SPEAKER_00So this is some of the work that we want to do with RAP because I think some of the insight that they've got at the minute is that they think that all households, regardless of income levels, waste the same amount of food, like by value. So there's there's a bit of information that every household wastes a thousand pounds worth of food waste each year, and that's apparently doesn't change depending on how much you're spending on food in the first place. And I think that we don't see that from our members, so we just don't see that at all. No, but then the other bit which is also kind of part of that narrative at the minute, and it's based on research, the research is out there, so it's just kind of we talk to our members and they're kind of an underrepresented part of society, aren't they? We we see that, yeah. But the other thing that they're saying is that over the last however many years, we know that food prices have gone up, but the level of household food waste hasn't come down. So there's a question mark over is it really still correlated by cost of food? Because you would have thought that as food prices go up, waste would come down, and that's not really been seen in the you know population level figures. So there's a lot to get into to understand it.
SPEAKER_02It's my turn to be triggered as well, isn't it? Because it rap seems to have a short memory as well, because they also have had stuff, and I think it was again was in the 2010s where they were looking at Islington and they did a piece of work around Islington with the local authority that showed that if they actually got people to stop buying the multi-buys and promotions and cheap food, the waste levels went down because people were planning better and actually cherishing the food that they got. So they saw that when prices went up and people didn't pay extra but paid a fair price for food rather than all being on reduction, etc., then people did waste less. So I I I'd love to see this data and love to get into it because it's going against everything that I've heard and thought for years.
SPEAKER_00One of the things that I think we need to do with our members, and I'm sure you'll help me draft some questions, is to think about what's affordable look like to you in terms of food. Let's get our members telling us like, could we quantify that? Could we be saying to government, actually it's this? Yeah. So that our members are kind of helping to shape that. But then also, what are your motivators for saving food? You know, I think a lot of our members all go, right? It's the day before bread and butter. Let's see what we've got in our fridge, let's let's make an omelette, let's make a big casserole or something with everything that's left. And then we go again and we get our surprise from bread and butter and things. How are they doing that in that lots of psychology behind making sure that they do use all their food? Because I think that'll be really interesting. Because, you know, these pieces of work that they're being done, and people are putting a lot of time and effort into getting some insight, but it's all at a top level, and I think we can uniquely help to try and demystify some of that, maybe.
SPEAKER_02I agree. He says calmly, trying not to react.
SPEAKER_00So you'll help me write some questions and we can do a survey.
SPEAKER_02I will absolutely help you write questions, talk to people, and come up with some clear definitions around what affordable looks like.
SPEAKER_00Nice, you've got homework this week. Love it.
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 breadandbutthing.org.
SPEAKER_00And if you've got any feedback or thoughts on the podcast, or want to come and be our guest, please drop us a line at podcast at breadandbutthing.org.
SPEAKER_02And we are always open to new members at all the buttons 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 the things that podcasts asks you to do. Like us, subscribe, leave us a review, share us with your friends, chat about us on social.
SPEAKER_02See you next time.
Tech As Lifeline To Family
SPEAKER_00See you next time.
