Kids Snack Packs

During the summer holidays we’ll be giving away packs of snacks for children who are missing free school meals.

Packs are available at the Loaf counter from 12 noon Tuesday to Friday on the following dates.

closedWed 26 JulyThu 27 JulyFri 28 July
Tue 1 AugWed 2 AugThu 3 AugFri 4 Aug
Tue 8 AugWed 9 AugThu 10 AugFri 11 Aug
closedclosedclosedclosed
closedclosedclosedFri 25 Aug
Tue 28 AugWed 29 AugThu 30 AugFri 1 Sep

Packs will contain the following:

  • Two snack bars
  • An apple
  • Carton of fruit juice
  • Crisps

Parents / guardians do not need to pre-order. We will have 20 packs available each day.

We do not have any funding to support this (though we are looking into it for next year). If you are able and would like to donate some money to cover the cost of the food you can do so online here or at the counter. Thank you.

Children going hungry in a developed country is a choice made by our society. If you think we should make a better choice, please let your MP know.

The 12 Days of Loafmass

The Twelve Days of Christmas (Loaf Edition)
by Dave Martin

On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me
A mince pie to have with my tea

On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Four focaccias
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Five Stirchley Loaves
Four focaccias
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Six Pip’s Hot Sauces
Five Stirchley Loaves
Four focaccias
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Seven chocolate brownies
Six Pip’s Hot Sauces
Five Stirchley Loaves
Four focaccias
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Eight pots of curry
Seven chocolate brownies
Six Pip’s Hot Sauces
Five Stirchley Loaves
Four focaccias
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Nine large multigrains
Eight pots of curry
Seven chocolate brownies
Six Pip’s Hot Sauces
Five Stirchley Loaves
Four focaccias
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Ten tins for proving
Nine large multigrains
Eight pots of curry
Seven chocolate brownies
Six Pip’s Hot Sauces
Five Stirchley Loaves
Four focaccias
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Eleven pain aux raisins
Ten tins for proving
Nine large multigrains
Eight pots of curry
Seven chocolate brownies
Six Pip’s Hot Sauces
Five Stirchley Loaves
Four focaccias
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Twelve sourdough starters
Eleven pain aux raisins
Ten tins for proving
Nine large multigrains
Eight pots of curry
Seven chocolate brownies
Six Pip’s Hot Sauces
Five Stirchley Loaves
Four focaccias
Three Frangipanes
Two butter cobs
And a mince pie to have with my tea

Now, where’s the Gaviscon?!

Thank you for being lovely

This year has not been easy for anyone and as it comes to an end we are tired but not beaten, and that’s mostly thanks to you.

The best thing about working at Loaf is seeing that queue every day. Through heatwaves and storms you came for your bread and reminded us why we do what we do. Most of us worked in the service industry before coming here so we know how rare it is to have such friendly and positive customers.

You don’t just keep us in business by buying our stuff. You keep us in business by being lovely people. And we never forget it.

If we don’t see you this week, please have the best time you can over the winter break. See you in 2023!

Team Loaf: Nancy, Neil, Sarah, Dave, Dorit, Rach, Pete, Molly, Ian & Martha

Give the gift of Loaf this Christmas

If you’re struggling for gift ideas, be aware that we sell vouchers.

Our cookery school vouchers can be bought in any denomination and can be used for all our classes. They come as a PDF that you can print out and put in a card. You can buy them online or in-store.

Our bread vouchers come in a cute pack of two, six or 12 with postcards and a sticker. They can be exchanged for loaves of bread in our shop. Order them online and we’ll post them to you, or you can pick them up in the shop.

Speaking of bread vouchers, don’t forget Rachel is hiding one a day around Stirchley for the annual treasure hunt, which is currently running on our Instagram account.

More Loaf merch

Our first t-shirt went down very well indeed so we’ve had another run printed in different colours. Green, blue and grey t-shirts are £15 with black long-sleeve shirts at £20.

The new larger tote bag has also proven popular and the new run is a bright yellow print on a navy blue bag — £12.

And we have a new style of draw-string bag which we’re calling a bread bag because you can keep your bread fresh it in. But of course you can put whatever you like in there — £10.

We’re awaiting delivery of the new tea towels — watch this space.

You can check out all our merchandise on this page.

Our shop is now spacious

When the pandemic hit we moved our counter to the front door and it’s stayed there ever since. We couldn’t easily put things back because we’d ramped up bakery production (to compensate for the closed cookery school) and filled the old shop with fridges and cooling racks. So we’ve spent the last year trying to find a compromise — and this week the prototype is ready for testing.

The headline is, the counter has been moved back so we can fit more of you in the building and serve at least two people at once. This should speed up the queue no end, not to mention being able to hear your order when a lorry goes by. Hooray!

Our range of bread is displayed in the window. These loaves are for display only — you can get your bread at the counter as usual. As you’re queueing you’ll notice we have lots more space for local products and Loaf merch — do check them out!

As we said, this is a prototype. We’re going to be taking copious notes over the coming weeks to see what works and what doesn’t, so do let us know what you think. Then in the new year we’ll spend some time fitting it out properly.

Stirchley Market was a blast

Neil and Pete had a great time at Stirchley Community Market on Saturday. It was rammed full of new and familiar faces and can safely be described as a success. It was great to have a bit more time to chat with people about what we do and why, and Neil did some in-depth sessions with struggling bakers.

The volunteers who manage the market are hoping to make it a quarterly event so we guess we’ll be back in the spring with trays of hot cross buns. See you then!

(Market pic by Kerry Leslie)

Advent treasure hunt returns

If you’re an aficionado of Loaf’s Instagram Stories, you’ll know Rachel’s advent treasure hunt is back for a third year!

Every day between now and Christmas she’s hiding a bread voucher somewhere in Stirchley and posting a clue at different times of the day. It’s then a race to get there first, and competition is often fierce.

Each voucher can be exchanged for a loaf of bread, and the final ‘golden ticket’ is for a big bag of goodies.

(The whys and wherefores of Instagram are a mystery to us greybeards on the email newsletter team but we think you can see an archive of the clues at this link.)

£250 raised for the B30 Food Bank in November

We passed on £250 worth of cash donations from those of you that were able to last month, alongside the many tins and packets of food left with us. We’ve been asked to pass on our thanks, so thanks!

We will continue to support our food bank as long as it is necessary, but it’s important to remember that it shouldn’t be necessary. A society where people are going hungry is a broken society and we should be working to eliminate the causes of this, not picking up the pieces again and again. Thankfully the Trussell Trust agrees.

But it seems we are a long way off this goal and people are suffering. This report of five months at a food bank is eye-opening and quite disturbing. It’s terrible that food banks are necessary, but they are.

You can make a cash donation with your Loaf purchases at the counter or online, or give directly here. And we continue to be a drop-off point for needed products.

Now open Tuesdays again

We are delighted and relieved to finally be back to our pre-pandemic opening hours. From this week we are open Tuesday through Friday from 12 to 6pm, along with Saturday 8am to 1pm. These will be our hours going forward with no further changes planned or anticipated.

The Tuesday offer at Loaf is broadly the same as other days with a couple of differences.

  • No croissants, as they need to be prepared a day in advance and Monday is already too busy.
  • No wholemeal sourdough, for similar reasons.

We’re also shifting the Tarka daal curry back to Tuesday as it needs less prep than our other curries.

Loaf: once again serving you fresh bread on both of the days that start with a T!

Rejoice! It’s mince pie season!

You’ve been patient for 11 months and it’s time to be rewarded. Our legendary mince pies are on sale from this Thursday 1st December.

Packed with the finest ingredients, including local apples and stout from Attic Brew Co, they’re available as vegan or buttered.

Pre-orders for the rest of December will go live this weekend, including mince pies, so you won’t miss out.

Spread the word — mince pies are back!

Loaf sponsors Bournville FC under 12 girls!

Calling yourself a community bakery is easy. How to be a community bakery is a whole other thing and something we revisit often. It turns out there are as many definitions of community as there are people and we’re always up for trying new things where we can.

Until Justin got in touch about Bournville FC’s under 12 girl’s squad, sponsoring a local sports team had honestly never occurred to us. Usually the clubs approach the chains for some corporate social responsibility money but that didn’t sit well with him, so he emailed us on a whim.

We quickly agreed that this was definitely something we wanted to do and as of this season the girls are playing in brand new shirts with Loaf logos. Nice!

Rach and Pete went along to Rowheath playing fields on Saturday to cheer them on and get some photos, more of which are posted below. It’s totally grassroots with parents shouting encouragement from the sidelines, but these leagues feeds into the professional clubs with scouts often visiting the games.

We’re hoping we can make this an ongoing thing, with talk of special cookies for match days and match reports in the newsletter, but mostly we’re just happy to be helping these awesome girls out!

Follow the Bournville teams on Facebook.

Continue reading Loaf sponsors Bournville FC under 12 girls!

World’s smallest croissant

On Friday, Molly decided to make the smallest croissants she could. The results were spectacular and will be submitted to the Artefact group show.

If you are in need of freshly baked croissants for your dolls house or Playmobil set, please get in touch.

Winter Lockdown plan

Thank you for your patience over the last couple of weeks. We’re happy to announce we’ll be re-opening on Friday 5th and Saturday 6th of February and pre-orders are being taken online from today.

Under the current Covid restrictions, we will be trading as follows:

  • We will be open Friday afternoon 12 – 4pm and Saturday morning 9am – 1pm.
  • All orders must be placed online as click-and-collect.
  • The cut-off for orders is midnight Wednesday evening.
  • Orders are collected in 20 minute time slots, limited to 10 people per slot.
  • You must wear a mask covering your nose and mouth when visiting our shop. If you cannot wear a mask, you can leave a note when ordering so we can accommodate this.

Additionally:

  • We will not be baking substantially more than is ordered, so please order everything that you need in advance. There won’t be extra bread on the shelves for now.
  • Baking equipment, flour and other ingredients are available on click-and-collect.
  • Other shop items can be bought when you collect.
  • Lunches are on hold for now.

Within Loaf we will be operating as follows:

  • The bakers have split into two smaller teams working one fortnight on, one fortnight off. Should one team be unable to work, the other team can cover.
  • Val will be running the shop, distanced from the bakers.
  • Pete is working from home managing orders and answering your emails, ready to cover Val if needed.
  • We will all be tested regularly where possible.
  • FFP2 / N95 masks will be worn in the building and when serving customers.

We will review this at the start of each month, with the aim of resuming our normal service when we can.

As with any new system built on the fly in this pandemic, there will be teething troubles, so thanks in advance for your patience! If you have any problems or questions, please let us know. Pete is monitoring the email every day and will get back to you.

Why are we doing this?

This is possibly too much detail, but we’re all figuring this out as we go and it might be useful to other businesses.

The severity of the new coronavirus strain and the risk it poses to our health and our jobs caused us to take stock after Christmas. Last year we relied on our industrial air extraction, hygiene systems, and maintaining a “Loaf work bubble” to keep us safe. With an increased transmission risk, however, it’s clear we need to do more.

The Loaf building is effectively a maze of corridors. Establishing a Covid-secure workplace with our full complement of staff is next to impossible, so we needed to reduce the number of people in the building at one time. The new system sees a maximum of three people spread across different rooms.

A safer working environment reduces our capacity and impacts the business, so we’re able to use the government’s furlough scheme. This is much more flexible this lockdown, allowing for part-time and short-term furloughs. This means we can rota the furloughs as teams and should one team test positive, pull the other back in without affecting production.

We were also getting more and more concerned about the queue which reached ridiculous lengths before Christmas. While most of you have been distancing, the amount of time you’re standing there increases the risk of transmission, especially on a windless day, so we need to do what we can to reduce that. It’s also horrible standing out there in the winter!

When you place your order you can select a time slot to collect. Each 20-minute slot is limited to 10 customers so you shouldn’t have to wait too long with too many people. Obviously if you’re late we’ll still serve you, but if you can keep to your slot it will help keep everyone safe.

If all goes to plan we should come out of this with everyone employed and the business in the black, ready for whatever this pandemic throws at us next!

Loaf’s Christmas Newsletter

A Big Thank You from Loaf

As one of the more challenging years in recent memory draws to a close we wanted to take this opportunity to thank all our friends, customers and associates for your support. 

Despite temporarily losing our cookery school, the heart of Loaf, we are ending the year financially in the black and with a cautiously optimistic outlook for 2021. That is ultimately down to you all buying our bread, pastries and lunches throughout the year. You queued for hours in the rain, forgave us the glitches as we overhauled our business on the fly, and gave us the positive feedback we needed to keep going through some exhausting times. 

Some of you have let us know that our food has been a small highlight during some dark and troubling moments. Please know that it goes both ways, and knowing that what we do matters to people is priceless. We have always called Loaf a “community bakery” and this year has really shown us what that means, how we can support the community and how the community can support us.

Fighting food poverty

A big change for Loaf this year was actively supporting those charities and organisations at the frontline of helping people affected by the pandemic. Mostly this has involved baking extra bread for schools and foodbanks to distribute to those in need. We asked for your financial help to pay for ingredients, and when donations dwarfed our costs we passed the money on. We’ve raised over £6,000, which has gone to the B30 Foodbank and Anawim women’s refuge. Both have asked us to pass on their thanks.

We will continue to raise money for local charities, aiming to work with them in the long term once our cookery school reopens. We’ll choose our charity for the first quarter of 2021 in the new year and we always welcome suggestions of other organisations to support. 

Building the future

The pandemic threatened to overshadow some exciting news for the future of Loaf. In April we formally announced our plans to buy and develop land between the British Oak and Hunts Road, joining with the Bike Foundry, Artefact Projects and local housing coops as Stirchley Cooperative Development. We’ve spent this year working with council officers to meet planning criteria and will be going before the planning committee in the new year. If all goes smoothly (and we’ve learned that it seldom does, but fingers crossed!), we should be moving into a custom-built new bakery and cookery school in Autumn 2022. 

An important part of this process was getting comments from the public in support of our plans. The response exceeded everyone’s expectations, raising some eyebrows among those familiar with these things. Planning applications are not supposed to get that sort of feedback! So another big thanks from all of us.   

Okay 2021, we’re ready for you

This year has really brought home the value of being a workers cooperative. Our non-hierarchical structure means we have an equal and collective responsibility for Loaf, sharing the burdens alongside the rewards. Collective decision making also means the pressure has not been focused on one person, and we’ve been able to help and support each other in making some difficult decisions. Nine heads really are better than one, and we’ll be putting them together again in the new year. 

Our Christmas shutdown is for three weeks this year. After our standard fortnight holiday we’ll be spending this extra week taking stock and planning for what promises to be another challenging year. We want to be less reactive to events and be ready for whatever the year throws at us, whether it’s six months of lockdown or a vaccinated wonderland. 

We hope you have the best Christmas possible.

Nancy, Martha, Neil, Sarah, Molly, Phil, Rach, Pete & Val – Team Loaf