Breaking Bread with Hovis

Bread is cheap, familiar, and everywhere which might be exactly why we waste so much of it. We sit down with Chris from Hovis to pull back the curtain on what “bread waste” actually looks like in UK bakery manufacturing and distribution, from out of spec loaves and sensitive dough to supermarket shelf life demands that can make perfectly good stock unsellable before it ever reaches a shelf.

We talk about how Hovis works across branded and own label products, how surplus shows up in distribution centres, and why so much still ends up in animal feed. Chris is candid about the practical barriers: older bakery equipment, tight margins that slow investment, and the hidden asset problem of bread trays, pallets and baskets that need constant replacing. It is a proper look at sustainability in food supply chains, with the messy trade-offs included.

From there, we get into the bits that affect all of us at home: date labels, the best before versus use by confusion, and how fear of getting it wrong drives household food waste. We also explore what could shift the system, from smarter logistics like backhauling to policy incentives that prioritise feeding people and recognise the true costs of food insecurity on health and stress.

If you care about food waste reduction, surplus food redistribution, and practical ways to tackle food poverty in the UK, press play then subscribe, share, and leave us a review so more people find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And What We Do

SPEAKER_03 0:10

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

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Yeah, we 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_03 0:24

For less than a tenor, our members get bags packed with fruit, veg, fridge food, and cupboard staples. It's a weekly shop that helps them stretch the budget and take some of the pressure off.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Our members are at the heart of everything that we do. They turn food into friendship and neighbours into community, and that's what makes us tick.

Why We Called Hovis

SPEAKER_03 0:39

Yeah, and today we're going to talk to Chris from Hovis. It's our second supplier one. So let's have a listen to Chris. Hovis is a very recognizable brand, but I guess there's a lot of things that you guys do that people may or may not recognise as well. So is it just the Hovis bread or is there so much more to it?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Are you referring to other brands? Yes, we we do supply own-brand produce for some large named suppliers. We also do things like Hulk Ross buns and rolls and various other items, including we make English muffins that we sell in France.

SPEAKER_03 1:30

Okay, that's not weird at all. How did you come about meeting bread and butter?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Good question. It was at an event, um, a rap event, I believe, in London about um two years ago, and I bumped into Justin Pritchard. He said he'd been looking forward to uh to seeing me at some point and targeted me in advance. He's been hunting you down. Yes, um he and he he he then um gave me a spiel about um how bakery was something that you guys were a little bit short of. Um we already worked with fair share nationally coming from a waste management background and being not just a sustainability person in my day job, but also I live and breathe it. So food waste is one of the big things that really bothers me and also food poverty, um particularly in in children. So he was he was talking to the right person basically. For sure. I know how much material and how much waste, bread, and etc. we send to animal feed on an annual basis. It's significant as most manufacturers do have quite a lot of waste, so it's a wasteful process modern manufacturing. It was a no-brainer read to sort of set up a pilot, and we started off. We knew that um the distribution centres would be a good place to start because all that they had is packaged goods, and obviously they've got they've got a good access for transport as well. So we started off with Goldborne and we've now moved ahead to I think it's four sites in total. The others are bakeries, and I'm trying to roll out your offer across um the rest of the portfolio as well.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

Fantastic. So you live and breathe it, Chris. I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to sustainability and food waste as well, and I've never had somebody that's worked in bakery to be able to ask this question to yourself. So buckle up. Okay.

Why Bakeries Waste So Much

SPEAKER_03 3:12

I see a lot of different industry sectors, pre- and post-farm gate, manufacturing, distribution, etc. Everywhere you can see a more and more of the waste being engineered out. And yet bread and bakery still seems to be the big waster, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Yeah, yeah, that's that's fair.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

I think it's a combination of things. Um, the two that spring to mind first and foremost are the fact that bread as an individual unit is uh quite cheap, yeah, and therefore seen as less of a of a commodity perhaps during the manufacturing process. And secondly, a lot of the large-scale manufacturing in the UK is in older establishments with older kit.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

So it's the lack of investment.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Yes, I mean it it's it's a challenge. It's a challenge to to maintain the the level of supply at the same time as um as not having issues with equipment and um and the likes.

SPEAKER_03 4:12

It's a fair challenge, Chris, because I gotta say, I've been around a lot of bakeries and and they they all are a bit creaky and a bit old.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Mature. It's a mature industry.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

It is, it is, and and as you say, because of the price point, etc., it's it it's cheap. So any investment, there's a long return on that, and that's not exciting or interesting to anybody really nowadays.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

It's not, and I mean I I was just looking at the uh latest rap report just today, actually, and then bread as overtaken potatoes is the most wasted food. It's the price point, I'm sure of it.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

It's a value piece, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Yeah, primarily it is. People don't perceive it as being that valuable, but it's a good cheap source of calories.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

And it's a staple, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

It is, yeah. I mean, I love it.

SPEAKER_03 4:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Depots Shelf Life And Returns

SPEAKER_03 4:55

yeah. So walk us through the process.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

So two different sources, really bakery and distribution centre. Distribution centre will have a various number of reasons why it has come back or it can't be delivered, um, based on shelf life on the product that they've got versus the customer and the level of shelf life that they want.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

And this is the customer being the supermarket rather than the customer being the end user.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yeah, large-scale supermarkets. This is this is the um this is B2B.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

So, how much life do you have to have on your productivity?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

It varies between five and seven days.

SPEAKER_03 5:25

If it's fit to be on a supermarket shelf when it's in your depot, that's a problem. Exactly that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

That is exactly the reason why a lot of it ends up being diverted to to animal feed, um, which is where the especially all of it goes, one that isn't directed to other your sales or fair share or the smaller charities that we have. We have uh compactors at all of our locations, and um the bread and the dough that goes into those and is then reprocessed into to feed for cattle and other animals.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Yeah, and and I challenge anyone to redistribute dough. That's tricky, but the bread. I'm assuming you get a revenue stream from animal.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

We do. There is um there's a set rate that we that we negotiate.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

So there's a bit of a tension there, isn't it? There is around the economies as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Yeah, yeah. I mean it it's it's an interesting indicator of of of the modern world in that in the fact that ideally we wouldn't make any waste. We shouldn't we shouldn't be producing anything.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Yeah, yeah, but we we know we do.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Exactly. Yeah, I guess um the more investment you put into reducing a source, the better, and then you deal with the the outcomes that you can't capture for the unforeseen events that lead to having the material to to dispose of. I see how much we've sent to you, how much we've sent to Fair Share, and it always looks it looks like a decent amount that we direct to you guys, but um then you add up versus the totals that that that go the other direction, and you realise there's plenty we can do.

SPEAKER_03 6:49

So you met Justin, um, we're in Foresights now. What's the plans? Do you know?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

For us personally, as an organization with you guys, I would like to in my ideal world would be if we're gonna have to create waste, which we obviously will do as we've just discussed, then the maximum amount of it is diverted away from food waste into animal feed into food waste or let's call it residual, yeah, into into you, into you guys into into your peers.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

I think we all have the common economic strains, which tends to be logistics, right? So you are just the same, and correct me if I'm wrong, Chris, where everybody goes, yeah, there's this stock here if you want it, but come and get it.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Yes, yes, yes, yes. But that's currently the extent of our um our logistics

Animal Feed Money Versus People

SPEAKER_01 7:38

offer. Yeah. I mean, ideally, ideally, we could sit down and look at a cleverer way of doing that. We're backloading as much as we can with products to a across different customers already. So, yeah, logistically, there's there's there's limited that we can do with that.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

Could you just explain backloading?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Oh yeah, um you I guess essentially you send a lorry full of products to a delivery site, you empty that lorry, so you've now got an empty lorry that in theory has to go back to its origin, and you backload it by putting something else on it to utilize that return journey so that it's maximized with regards to um environmental and um financial return. So you could just pop next door, pick something else up, and drop it somewhere else on your way back, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

Makes a ton of sense. We do quite a bit of that ourselves and try to uh engineer that into our logistics. It just helps, as you say, both ways, economically and environmentally.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:31

So the other common barrier that we have is the bane of assets, bread trays and pallets and infrastructure around those.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yes. That is an interesting one. We do have a lot of baskets.

SPEAKER_03 8:44

And are yours HOVAS specific or generic?

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Both we we we we try to use Hovis HOVAS specific, but generics are required by some customers, and then there's a wastage factor, we lose quite a fair proportion of those throughout the year to various places, and then we have to keep topping up that stock as we go.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

Yeah. Why do you think the one thing is that consumers or redistributors commonly misunderstand about food waste in a bakery?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I wonder how many of them actually think about food waste in a bakery for starters.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

I would imagine it depends on the name on the label as to what they perceive about food waste full stop and what any company's doing. Um and you I guess people have got the idea in their mind of of a certain brand and what that means to them and what that essentially means without going into any detail as to what they're doing across all levels. We've got a great brand and um it's quite traditional, but it's it's it's trusted, and rightly so. Um I mean I've worked I've worked in quite a few places over my time, but I don't think I've worked with better people than than I've met at Hobas. And and I'm I'm more than happy to say that. Assuming no one from my previous job's listened to this.

SPEAKER_03 10:08

My other employers were nice to you.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Yes. Some of them were nice some of the time.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

Yeah. Um bread when you open up a loaf, you kind of know whether you can put it in a toast or make a sandwich out of it. Because touch, feel, smell, taste, all those basics really work with bread. Like they do with simple things like milk. You sniff milk, it doesn't need a date. But it still gets a date.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yes. It does. I guess yeah, I know what you're saying. Um I love the idea of the anarchy there of the world that you're you're portraying the Russian roulette of the food industry. And I think that may be a step backwards.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Um, I asked, Chris. For example, this morning I I was in Whitby doing a food waste assembly to kind of primary school kids. Right. They are date savvy, but not necessarily fully understanding the distinction between a best before and a used by. Because of that, people just see a date and beyond that date, been it.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yes,

Dates Common Sense And Skills

SPEAKER_01 11:15

I'm aware of I'm aware of that particular phenomenon not far from where I am right now, in fact.

SPEAKER_03 11:21

I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you can imagine, it's been drilled into my case.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:30

Hence the question, because I I fully understand that in a freshly sealed packet, it's really difficult not to put a date on something.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:38

How do we educate people that actually it doesn't really mean a lot this date once you've taken it off the shelf?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

That's a good question, and and one that that the rapper's throwing a lot of resources at.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

Good dodge.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Um, yeah, I I mean, I'm only the humble sustainability manager, so I my my views around food waste are sometimes my own. Maybe I'm not probably the right person to answer that specifically, but from the on a general point, I I agree with you. I think um the common sense test, the uh does it bounce, that kind of thing, is it's probably okay. I mean, if you think about you could pretty much uh toast it when it's moly, and the high temperatures are going to kill most things anyway. But people don't need to do that. We you know we've we've kind of made a rod for our own backs with the used by best before conundrum, haven't we?

SPEAKER_03 12:31

I think so. I think that there's many, many people that think about that nowadays, don't they? And say we we've kind of lost some of those basic skills. Yeah. Lost that relationship with food because we've made it safer. There is a benefit because we've made it safer, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Exactly. Yeah. Well, maybe um maybe we'll we'll have to relearn those skills one day.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

Interesting that uh bread's taken over potatoes as the most wasted food. I know. You see, I always thought, and maybe this is homework for me again, but uh I always thought it was bag salads.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Really?

SPEAKER_03 13:16

Yeah, because they they're so volatile. Once you open them, boof, if you don't use it all, the nitrogen comes out of the packet and they just go so quickly.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

But bag salad isn't as much as a staple as a potato or a bread.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

No, it's not. I totally agree. And and I guess it's nowhere near as heavy either. So if we're measuring by tonnage.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Oh, yeah, fair. Well, that means it's got to be a lot of bread to take over spuds.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

Yeah, well, it'll be dough as well when it sent dough is quite heavy.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Okay, but then surely that's part of the manufacturing process. So when you say that bread's taken over as spuds is the most wasted thing, I was thinking, well, this is in the household, not everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Yeah, yeah. I think it's everywhere. The interesting thing about it though, it is dough, that's the tricky bit. Dough is such a sensitive beast, and as much as they try to actually get it right, you can see it when you go in bakeries. Like sometimes you'll see batches coming out of the oven too small in the tins or or kind of overflowing the tins, and both of those are wrong in the bakery world because they don't fit in the nice plastic film that they fit them in.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

And so would bread outgrades usually go to animal feed then?

SPEAKER_03 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

How come not people?

SPEAKER_03 14:25

Quite a bit of it, it does go to people through us and others, but I I think it's yet again another thing where people are waking up to it more and more. It's finding the right people like Chris and Hovis that want to do it. And it is a routine supply that you can get from organisations like that.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yeah, so I'm pretty sure, and I don't think it was with Hovis, and I can't remember who it was with, that we've bumped up against some technical on this because of the labelling.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Because every bread then weighs something different, but you've got to have the weight on the label.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

Well, that depends. I genuinely don't think the weight changes. I'm thinking about my science now, because if you put 300 grams of dough into a tray, I don't think that 300 grams changes just because it's overproved or underproved. I think yeah, I take that.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

It's a bit like when you told me that frozen food is the same weight as non-frozen soup.

SPEAKER_03 15:25

Yeah, so as much as you put in the tray, the weight doesn't change per se. But I I think what they were looking at is they tend to have a pretty fixed view on the weight, whereas you can put a label on that has an estimated plus or minus certain grammage that you're allowed to put on instead. But it is a labelling. I'm I'm getting far too nerdy on this bit. I'm sorry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

You are, but I think you've proved me wrong anyway, because if you put 300 grams of dough in, it's 300 grams of dough, right? Even if it's the wrong shape.

SPEAKER_03 15:54

300 in, 300 out, right? The only thing that happens is that uh a bit of the moisture comes out.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah. Wow, that was that's tangent.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Yeah,

Incentives Policy And True Costs

SPEAKER_03 16:03

triggered. And I guess the other tension with bakery to redistribute it to people is that economic pull of animal feed. Yeah. There's a revenue stream there, and you don't have to think about food safety, and you can just put your dough and your over-proved or underbaked loaves in the same bin and not think about it. Whereas you can't treat food like that.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

I see that. And you know, this is the challenge that we've got with all redistribution. How do we look at how policy could change so that people were always prioritised and where are the incentives needed? And actually, my really naive view is that it possibly wouldn't cost any more if we got the right money in the right place to prioritize people. But it's just a very different way of thinking.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

Do you mean in comparison to the subsidy for AD, etc., or do you mean economically just as a the cost of a product?

SPEAKER_00 16:59

I'm thinking more about the subsidies and if we were to realign those. But then, you know, if you were to have a really whole systems think about this, the cost of malnutrition, the cost of obesity, the cost of other stuff.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Well, all of the emotional stress with food insecurity, right? Totally. All of the health outputs that are just so negative from food insecurity.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

All of that. But if we'd said, right, we'll take a bit from the health budget, and we'll take a bit from the AD budget, and we'll do all of this, and we actually just resliced some of government money, then I think we could get more surplus unlocked to people without suppliers being impacted, and that could be better. But you know, this is me with my little very top-level budget and my simple brain. And I'm sure that there'd be government departments that would tell me that this is not possible.

SPEAKER_03 17:52

If only we had some civil servant from the treasury that could come in and destroy your argument.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

If only. Now they're not here, so it's a really valid argument.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

Yeah, I'm with you, Vic.

unknown 18:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

You gotta hope. You've got to kind of live in some kind of naivety, I think is okay a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

Well, no, I you say naivety, I think simplicity, because I think we are really good at overcomplicating things.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Yeah. Not us bread and butter, just the world.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

Yes, the world.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

I think we're quite good at simplifying things.

SPEAKER_03 18:22

I couldn't agree more. Well, take redistribution as an example. We the number of times we talk about how complicated it can be because you find so many different technical or food safety or logistics problems with it. But actually, if you just drill it down to one sentence and just say, just treat it like food.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Well, this brings us on to your date label conversation.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Yeah. Didn't want to answer Chris, did he? Bless him. Well, I think it felt like a door stepped in.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

I think at first he was thinking no date labels on anything, which is absolutely not what you were suggesting. So it wasn't like, well, it'll just be a Russian roulette. It's like more from a best before perspective, what value add is there? And even the display until, if you were to swap best before until display until, which is where my head was going when I was listening, I still don't think that that would be enough because to your point, there's still a date on and someone's going to read it and panic.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

Exactly. And it's a quality standard that is, I don't know, I would love to see some stats on the amount of food waste that a best before date is generating.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Yeah.

Markets Without Date Labels

SPEAKER_03 19:30

Have you ever been to Bolton Market?

SPEAKER_00 19:31

I've been to Berry Market.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

It's better.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Bolton Market is better than Berry Market.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Yeah, I know I've said it out loud in public now.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

Yeah, yeah. So go to Bolton Market and the food market, the food halls are just amazing. And there are so many butchers and fishmongers and fresh produce, the things that you can get there, but some of it's not refrigerated. None of it has date labels on it. It's all fresh over-the-counter stuff. And then you compare that to going to a supermarket when everything's in plastic with a date on it. And I just wonder what the customers of the food market, the food halls, think about when they actually buy it and what sense they're putting to the chicken thighs that they're buying or the Langestines or the fresh salmon. It's like, once you take it home, you're going to eat it in a day, all of it? I doubt it.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

You see where I'm going, it's just like even challenging used by dates because it's all fresh and it's over the counter, none of it has a used by date on it.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Okay. Does it actually not? No. I'm going to go to Bolton Market and check.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

You should. Anybody that's in the neighbourhood should definitely go to I highly recommend Bolton Food Market.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

How often do you go to Bolton Market?

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Not that often, but whenever we do. I went last weekend, to be fair.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Do you just not go to Berry Market because you're a veggie and you've got beef with the black pudding?

SPEAKER_03 20:52

No, not at all. They do black pudding. They do a lot of butchery at Bolton Market as well. What you've got at Bolton is such a diverse range of everything. I've never seen yams bigger.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Oh well. I did a tour of Leeds Market recently because you know that I'm just a nerd. And did you know that MS was started in Leeds Market?

SPEAKER_03 21:12

I did not.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yeah. Marks and Spencer's started in Leeds Market. Wow. Yeah. And they've got a really quite good row of fishmongers and even an oyster bar, which you wouldn't expect in the market.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

No.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Didn't go.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

Not a fan. No, and there are sometimes the reasons why I really enjoy being a veggie, and it's the thought of oysters.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

And if you can hear panting, it's not me, it's blue. He's come to say hello.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

It's not the reaction to the oyster.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

It's not the reaction to the oysters.

Backloading Empty Miles And Assets

SPEAKER_00 21:42

So I think the other thing that uh Chris picked up on is that we're wanting to redistribute food to people. So that's kind of environmentally friendly to a point. But then we also want to do that using trucks that are empty trucks, you know, that are doing wasteful miles. And he calls It's backloading, but we tend to call it back hauling, don't we?

SPEAKER_03 22:03

Yeah, we do. And back hauling is a real thing, and it it's another thing that I would say needs measuring because there is a lot of empty space on these trucks going up and down that could and should be used for better things. Even if they're not moving, I don't know, food or assets or trays or whatever we call them. The space there to be utilized somehow.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah. Like they don't have windows on them trucks, do they? Not in the back.

SPEAKER_03 22:33

Exactly. It's the size of the prize, right? Nobody knows the size of the prize because nobody discloses it.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Yeah. But we we work with our whole years to do that though.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

Mm-hmm. I know. We engineer that in as much as we can because it keeps it cheap as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, it does.

How To Get Involved

SPEAKER_03 22:55

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, or on LinkedIn or online at breadandbutterthing.org.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

And if you've got 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_03 23:12

And we are always open to new members at all of our hubs. 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 the website.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

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

SPEAKER_03 23:29

We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

See you next time.