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
Gemma Shows How Dignity, Not Charity, Builds A Stronger Neighbourhood
A warm room, a friendly queue, and equal bags for everyone might sound simple, but they’re the building blocks of a neighbourhood that refuses to let people go hungry or feel ashamed. We sit down with Gemma from St Luke’s in Wythenshawe to explore how a volunteer-led hub transforms surplus food into affordable groceries, steady routines and real belonging. She shares how the £8.50 food club protects dignity, why the “first bag’s best” rumour is just that, and how a thousand cups of tea create doors into advice, friendship and practical help.
We dig into the operational heartbeat that makes trust possible: warehouse sorting, reverse packing, and end-of-line top-ups so latecomers get the same quality as early birds. Gemma talks about running a year-round warm hub—Big Brew Time—where a chat, a translator at the right moment, or a well-placed Citizens Advice referral can turn fear into breathing room. One member left with £40 more each week plus free prescriptions and dentistry; small on paper, huge in a household budget stretched by food inflation and rising bills.
Capacity and demand loom large. Vans are full, hubs are busy, and the need isn’t fading. We’re clear about identity and impact: an eco-led food club that reduces waste, reaches the communities hit hardest, and keeps choice in people’s hands. Along the way you’ll hear the joy and humour of a line that knows its order, neighbours saving spots, and mobility scooters up front, all proof that logistics can be humane and community can be efficient.
If you value practical solutions, dignity-first design and stories of local heroes changing streets one brew at a time, this one will stay with you. Subscribe, share with a friend who cares about community, and leave a review to help more people find the show.
Hello and welcome back to a slice of bread and butter with me, Vic, and Mark. We're from the Bread and Butter Thing.
SPEAKER_01:We run a network of mobile food clubs that take surplus food from supermarkets, farms and factories, and we take it straight into communities where families are struggling to get by.
SPEAKER_02:For less than a tenner, our members get bags packed with fruit, veg, fridge food, some cupboard staples and a little bit of frozen. It's a weekly shop that helps stretch the budget and takes some of the pressure off.
SPEAKER_01:Our members are at the heart of everything we do. They turn food into friendship and neighbours into community.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and that's what makes us tick.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and today it is a proper community hero for us. This is Gemma from Withenshire.
SPEAKER_00:I'm Gemma. Originally started as a volunteer and a member, and I've worked my way up to Hub Lead now. Volunteer Hub Lead.
SPEAKER_01:And your self-professed longest serving volunteer.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I am here. I've been here since the day we opened.
SPEAKER_01:So where are we?
SPEAKER_00:We're at St. Luke's Bench Hill with Inshore.
SPEAKER_01:With Inshore, that's Rashford family.
SPEAKER_00:No, some of those are blues. Some of those are blues, sorry.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Fair dudes.
SPEAKER_00:But yes, it is where the Rashfords came from.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:We are a very deprived, poor area. Even though we have the airport nearby.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you're ten minutes from the airport, aren't you?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. But we have levels of I'll use one of my figures that I do know. 60 to 80% of children in the pr local primary schools around here are on free school meals. It's between 60 to 80% in every school around here.
SPEAKER_01:Tell me about you.
SPEAKER_00:I'm a mum or two. I have disabilities and I have my own, I have learned difficulties. But I worked my way up to become an authorised lay minister. In layman's terms, I do a lot of stuff for the church and the local community. And I just love the area. I moved here ten years ago. Appeared here at a food bank because I was short, had no money. And when we went through the process of looking at what was more dignified, we found Hughes Lot.
SPEAKER_01:Uselot being the bread and butter thing. Yes. When I first met you, you were, as you say, a volunteer in your wheelchair.
SPEAKER_00:I was a mobility scooter back then.
SPEAKER_01:It was a mobility scooter, it wasn't. With with your speaker hanging off the front of it and barking at everybody.
SPEAKER_00:I was really I've changed so much. This has done so much for me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I know you say you do a lot for the community, but you don't realise what effect you have on the community here. Friendships are formed.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I know everyone in the queue when I can go around women's short and I'll get say hello. It's a social group. I've seen friendships form in the queue now, and they're just best of friends.
SPEAKER_01:Bringing people together, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. We have our warm hub all year round, which most people don't. They normally close them down and just have them at winter. We have ours all year round because they love to go and NATO and have a break.
SPEAKER_01:So what does that look like? Is it coffee mornings?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we sort of like changed our place of welcome to fit with bread and butter. So we did have a place of welcome here on a Wednesday. We found it was better to have it here on a Friday as a warm hub instead. And people are using it, and people are coming in when it's cold and wet and raining. We're having organisations come in and inform, like today, we had the healthy, well-being people today. And something really touched us. We've had a family who is struggling with a language barrier here, Chinese family, and we had the lady here who could speak Chinese, and she had a fluent conversation with them. She said that they said they feel welcome and wanted, even though there was a language barrier here, because they were never turned away, and we always try to do what we can for them.
SPEAKER_01:Nice.
SPEAKER_00:And that's the mentality we've we've built around with having bread and butter here and having your staff here as well. They've been diving in to get to know the community when we've had regular people here. But what drives you and why do you do it? Seeing people happy and seeing people not go without. I grew up extremely poor and extremely in a very rough sort of upbringing. I know what hunger is. Yeah. And even though I tell people that come here, this is not a poverty charity, this is an eco-charity. This is all about saving food from the landfill. It benefits people that are poor, but we are still eco. Because I have people say to me, What's the criteria of getting bread and butter? I went, we don't have a criteria. You can pay the£8.50, you can have it. And that's all we care about. You register, you get yourself on the list, and even if you don't, if we don't get no shows, I like to sell them off so I don't waste anything. But I don't want anything going back to the bin.
SPEAKER_01:You and me both.
SPEAKER_00:Because we've got hungry people out there who haven't got enough money.
SPEAKER_01:What we've done, Gemma, is we still go into places that are struggling. You know, I I I wouldn't set up in the middle of Cheshire, for example.
SPEAKER_00:It wouldn't work.
SPEAKER_01:It would purely on an eco basis. Yeah, on an eco basis, but not on the It was more about actually using that food to help people grab a bargain, stretch the budgets, but also bring them into the community, and then you turning into the mother of the community is perfect.
SPEAKER_00:I love doing it. I love being around. I love going through Civic and I get people saying hello. But I've got members from here who we've met as clients from the food bank originally who now do not use the food bank anymore and come here with their£8.50. And I know some of them scrape it together. I've seen a family who has scraped the£8.50 together to come and get a set. And she's struggling to get onto the tech scheme because she can't afford to text. She'll phone me because I'm on the same network as her, so she gets it free and she gets a set at the end if I've got something left, but she still gets said and she's not using the food bank.
SPEAKER_01:But she still feels like she's standing around two feet.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. But I know she scrapes that money together every week to come down.
SPEAKER_01:It almost makes you think about the uh emotion involved in a food bank. It does.
SPEAKER_00:I know people think that food banks and there's no dignity to them, and this there is because they are paying, they're not paying full price, which we both know, but they are paying summits, and that's why we actually originally wanted this here. And when it came here, I know the state I was in. I was rock bottom, angry at the world, angry at everyone, and I'm not anymore.
SPEAKER_01:I remember you were more feisty.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, a lot more feisty. I still can be when I need to be to protect people and to protect this. Try to be the best I can.
SPEAKER_01:So, can you tell me about your hub then? Have you got any stories that you could share of anyone that sticks in your head?
SPEAKER_00:One of our hub members was struggling with money issues really badly. I don't know what it was, but she just decided to tell me she's not coping. They were struggling to make their mortgage payments. And I took a citizen's advice when it was here, when they came in one day. She's now£40 better off a week and getting a prescription's free charge and a dentistry fear charge. It doesn't sound a lot£40, but to her it was a world. I know people have just gone to me, oh,£40 is nothing. It is a lot to people like me.
SPEAKER_01:When you haven't got much,£40 a lot.
SPEAKER_00:She still comes to the hub and gets food every week. You can tell she's not as worried anymore. We know when someone's missing as well. When someone who comes for so many weeks is missing.
SPEAKER_01:What do you do?
SPEAKER_00:I'm now a pastoral care worker as well, so we try and find out if we can find someone who knows them or knows where they are, and we'll check up and find out what's going on.
SPEAKER_01:So the word goes out down the line. Yes, where's Margaret?
SPEAKER_00:We'll check up on people. Every other week we see people. So if I haven't seen someone for a month, then I start to worry. We could easily do two hubs a week. I could easily do two vans a week here. I'm not joking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, it just goes to show it's in the right place, then, doesn't it? Very much.
SPEAKER_00:We have a lot of people that are grateful for what we do. We have the moers.
SPEAKER_01:I like moaners.
SPEAKER_00:I don't want to upset your distribution team when they come to visit me.
SPEAKER_01:Do you know why I like moaners? I like moaners because if you get people that are grateful that turn into moaners, for me it feels like they're standing back on their own two feet and they're phoning the voice. That's what I mean by I like moaners.
SPEAKER_00:No, these are just people that are out for now. What we get in is what has been done in the warehouse, and if they haven't got it, they ain't got it. You get what you're given.
SPEAKER_01:It's funny because we've had that. Up in the northeast, there's a little town called Darlington where we run quite a lot of hubs. So one day we'll have food that goes out to one hub, and then everybody knows what's going on in that hub. And because it's a tight-knit community, the next hub the next day are expecting the same food, and they're like, hang on, they got that yesterday, why aren't we getting it? sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that here. Because you have a hub over in sale as well from us, and some of the people travel to sale to go get it as well. And we've got fret people that have got sisters that are up in Hattersley, up at theirs.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so they they're all telling each other what food they're.
SPEAKER_00:I'm getting told what's going on in Old Trafford when I go to some of my workshops, but I've always said my argument is when someone starts moaning, is we get what we get, it's what's donated, and I've got a waiting list as long as my arm.
SPEAKER_01:Is it still the same that everyone thinks the first bags are best?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, and I don't know why. I don't. Because it's always the last bags are the best. Because they're the first pack. Yeah, exactly. You don't realise we pack in reverse.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Plus, as well, on the van, we've got an amazing system. We stack everything and we count it into 80 piles before we start bagging now. And then they will pack everything in, and then we have the extras. So we try and make every bag as similar or as the same as possible.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And all bags are equal, but as you say, the the last ones, there'll be extras left as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:To this day, I don't know why people think, but it everywhere I go, everyone thinks first bag's best.
SPEAKER_00:I just find it funny. When we start at half one, people are queuing before the van gets here some days. I have people that turn up at 11 o'clock. Wow. And I'm there going, why are you here? Go to the warm pub, leave me alone. Wow. We have that relationship here as well. Everyone is just giggling and laughing.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say, and it always seemed to be here, and I don't know whether it's like this everywhere else, but everyone had their space in the line here. People that save spaces for each other and stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it does, and they go in the groups, and we found we draw more people with neurodiversity in here, and it seems to have worked. And my daughter comes to it's showing the community that everyone's valued, and that's what we want to put us forward to the EFOS. Nothing's for the bin, even people.
SPEAKER_02:Well, Gemma is a force to be reckoned with, isn't she?
SPEAKER_01:She is. I love Gemma, and I've known her all the kind of eight years she's been doing this, and she's really grown in the role as well. She does so much for the community, and the way she really likes that people recognise her now and do it, give her a shout out on the straight and stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Loved that little bit of like local celeb factor.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that was great. But like, whilst that's quite funny and you know makes me smile, that hub and Gemma's efforts have done massive work for people.
SPEAKER_01:I remember I've heard you cite before about the queue at St. Luke's.
SPEAKER_02:That really made me smile. Really made me smile. Everybody in the same order, the mobility scooters up front, all having a chin wag. And there was one day when one of them was gonna have a hospital appointment the following week, and they're like, I don't know what I'm gonna do for my food. And another one said, It's alright, I'll grab it for you. Come round mine afterwards, you can pick it up. Cool, it might be the next morning. That's okay, that's fine. That just really made me smile. But yeah, the community at St. Luke's is second to none, and you know, Gemma is absolutely at the heart of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh, she is, and the way she talks about the demand and uh how challenging it it is around there. So why are we not doing two hubs though?
SPEAKER_02:Two vans, yeah. Largely because all of our vans are out in different communities, but yeah, I mean we see that in some of our hubs where we could do that a little bit more.
SPEAKER_01:It's just a capacity thing, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we'd love to, but yeah, like you say, it's a capacity thing. And we looked to have like years ago, we looked to have a second hub in Withenshore, and that didn't work for whatever reason. We didn't find the venue and different part of the community. But I kind of feel like we'd never replicate a St. Luke's.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say, I don't think we want to replicate it, we'd just want to, wherever we could, increase the capacity at St. Luke's, really.
SPEAKER_02:And I think that that, you know, the cost of living, I hate to say the word crisis because it's just not been it's been going on for too long, but the current cost of living means that people need to stretch the budgets in many communities, and yeah, it'd be great if we could do a load more, but we have so many vans.
SPEAKER_01:So we need we need a new way of describing it, Vic, because people are still definitely no better off than they were. Inflation is still going up, particularly food inflation, yeah. And everybody's talking about how difficult it's gonna be at Christmas, etc. And yet to talk about the cost of living is just normalized now. Everyone's just like, yeah, money's tight, I get it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's like, well, no, it's more than that.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's people living with negative budgets, isn't it? We've chatted about this previously, when by the time all your bills have gone out, what have you got left for you? Literally now. And these people are, you know, it's people that are working and people that are doing a lot, and and if you look at Gemma, she's just doing everything to help everybody in her community, and she couldn't do anything more, and she's doing it really passionately with a smile on her face. And there's people like Gemma in lots of communities, and we're in lots of communities, but just doesn't touch sides, does it?
SPEAKER_01:No, it doesn't. Um, and you you think about somewhere like St. Luke's and the the way they're doing the double ladder thing, doing the food bank and the food club.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I thought that Gemma was just on the money, really, with how she was talking about food banks, and then how she really clearly got that bread and butter was something different and it wasn't a food bank, which is lovely because we don't get that everywhere. Food banks is just a phrase that everyone wants to use, and we are not one of those. But Gemma gets it.
SPEAKER_01:She does. Gemma also was lobbying me afterwards and saying, eight years, eight years, Mark, and you've still not named a van after me.
SPEAKER_02:Well, yeah, I think we can fix that.
SPEAKER_01:I think we should.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So also, what about warm hubs? Because we're heading into winter, but we did warm hubs years ago in COVID, kind of thing. And we quickly realized that it wasn't about getting warm, it was more about having a chat and making some friends and having a brew and feeling part of something and getting out of the house and all of that. So Gemma still talks about our warm hubs, but we call them big brew time, and we give out literally thousands of cups of tea or coffee or squash or whatever every year. Last year I think it was about 50,000 brews. You know, it's 50,000 conversations.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Like that's the bigger thing for me.
SPEAKER_01:And it it's the all-year-round thing as well, isn't it? So the way Gemma was talking and the and the way they just do it now, and it's just the same every week. Yeah. That that's the way it works. Keep doing it that way, keep keep talking and chatting and opening up for members every week. That just makes more sense.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And then she did make me laugh with the these people that come and they're first in the queue and they think they're getting the best bag because we packed it first. They have no idea. I loved that. It was so honest, but kind of brutal a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:It's a bread and butter urban legend, though, isn't it? Everybody, for whatever reason, thinks first bags are best.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And and you talk to any volunteer and they'll clearly tell you we pack them all the same.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we pack them all the same. If we've got food left over at the end, everybody gets a little bit of it. We call it backfilling. It's a terrible term, but topping up the bags happens. Yeah, it's funny. But I also think that if people are time poor, where lots of our members are, at least they've got the confidence that they're not going to get the NAF bag at the end.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That actually they have been packed the same. And they don't have to have waited around and had a chat for an hour. If you've just come off shift and you want to run in and grab your bags and then do a school run, you're getting the same as everyone else. So it kind of works for lots of people at different stages in life.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, agreed.
SPEAKER_02:But I did like Gemma finding it funny. So 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 Instagram and Twitter, or LinkedIn, or TikTok, or online at breadandbutterthing.org.
SPEAKER_01:And if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast, or you'd like to come and have a guest with us, drop us an email at podcast at breadandbutterthing.org.
SPEAKER_02: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 page of the website.
SPEAKER_01:And please do all those things that podcasts asks you to do. Like us, subscribe to us, leave us a review, or share us with your friends and chat about us on social.
SPEAKER_02:Nice. See you next time.
SPEAKER_01:See you.
