I just wanted to write a quick blog post before I finish for Christmas to let you know our plans for the New Year. If you follow us on Twitter you’ll know by now that we have signed a contract for a lease on a new premises on our local high street in Stirchley, south Birmingham. This is great news as we’ve been operating from Jane’s and my house for 2 years now, and we’re bursting at the seams!

The property (pictured right) has been recently purchased by Everards the brewer, with the purpose of Loaf being their tenant at the building. the new Loaf HQ will be the first premises established as part of Everards’s ‘Project Artisan’ – an innovative scheme to purchase and then lease out buildings suitable for artisan food and drink businesses that need to expand, initiated by Everards after the success of their project to convert pubs for micro-breweries (Project Willam). Everards investment in the property means that Loaf can take on a bigger and more suitable premises than we otherwise could have done and we are very grateful that they came along when they did. We’re currently waiting on planning permission for the conversion of the premises, and there will then be 2 months of building work to complete. This means we are hoping to be in the new place by late March or April.

What will the new place do?

Loaf has been running a community bakery and cookery school for two years now, and the new premises is primarily an expansion of those – there will be a 12-person cookery school on site (visible from the pavement!), as well as a bakery producing a range of real bread for Stirchley and the surrounding area. They’ll also be a retail space, which Loaf is giving to South Birmingham Food Co-operative to run as a joint space. They will be selling our bread in the shop, alongside store cupboard essentials, wholefoods, and eco cleaning products etc – all ethically sourced and fairly priced.

Bread Bonds

Everards are investing in the refurbishment of the property, which is an enormous help, and means we only need to buy the equipment we need and fit it into the property when we’re handed the keys. We need to raise around £25,000 to kit out the bakery and cookery school. In January we will be doing a ‘bread bond’ issue which we hope will raise the majority of that cash. We are looking for people interested in buying ‘loanstock’ – essentially a £1000 loan to Loaf for 3 years. During the 3 years, bread bond holders will get an interest rate on their loan, which instead of being paid in cash will be paid in the equivalent value in bread. At the end of three years, the bread bond holder get’s their £1000 back. If this is something that might interest you and you’d like to be included in the bond issue or would like more details please email me at tom@loafonline.co.uk - I won’t be answering emails until after the new year, but I’m guessing you’ll be pretty busy too, and i’ll be in touch asap after new year.

There’ll be plenty of updates next year as the project progresses, so keep your eyes peeled to the blog or twitter for all the latest. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, Peace,

Tom.

No is the short answer. BBC Olive Magazine however, would beg to differ. In November’s edition of the mag, they pitted Birmingham against 6 other destinations (London, Edinburgh, Ramsbottom, Ludlow, Melton Mowbray, and Abergavenny) to find out ‘who’s the foodiest of them all?’. Birmingham came out top with 36 points out of 50 after adding up categories such as restaurant heroes (Balti’s, Glynn Purnell etc), local food (Loaf, Frost and Snow, other social enterprises etc), retail (Rossiters, Capeling, farmers markets etc), claims to fame (Cadbury’s), and the festival factor (Onion Fair, BBC-ahem-good food show, Birmingham Food Fest). Quite how they came up with the short-list I don’t know but I’m sure there are quite a few aggrieved town’s and cities out there (Liverpool, Bristol, Padstow, Cartmel, Oxford, Bray etc). Although I welcome the publicity for my adopted city, and agree with most of the things the article praises, I just can’t agree that Birmingham can possibly be crowned the culinary capital of the UK right now. If the award was for most improved, I think Birmingham would rightly be in the running, it’s seen a huge change in food culture in the eleven years that I’ve been in the city. But really, our food culture is only beginning, it’s a babbling baby in comparison to some of the other destinations mentioned. I actually supplied quite a lot of the information that ended up in the article (see this post), but I never thought in a million years we actually stood a chance of winning.

It’s undoubted that the higher end fine dining scene is now fairly well established in the city, thanks to many many years of hard work on the part of characters like Andreas Antona, Richard Turner, Glynn Purnell, and the ever improving output from the College of Food (UCB). There’s signs of life at the grassroots level too from people like us, Sense City, all the various markets, and other food growing initiatives, co-operatives, home-businesses, and social enterprises that are springing up. There’s also a huge existing swathe of decent cheap food shops and markets in parts of the city, particularly those parts populated by Asian, African, and Afro-Caribbean communities, and we do pretty well at the budget-level in terms of restaurants – you can eat out well for very little cash in chinatown, the balti triangle, and again in parts of the city populated by Asian, African, and Afro-Caribbean communities, and in some places in the city centre too.

The gaping hole in Birmingham’s food culture for me is that there is just not enough in the middle, between budget and high end for both restaurants and retail, to really engage the masses in caring about and eating good food. Really if you want to go somewhere and eat simple, well cooked food, properly seasoned, nicely presented and served with a smile, for around £20 a head, where is there to go?  And to get a decent range of quality ingredients if you’re not a particularly high earner, where is there? You either trawl to several shops across several suburbs and take up half a day doing so, or resort understandably, to a supermarket. If only every town centre in Brum could have a ‘Grocer @ Edgbaston‘ – the only shop I can think of that can really say ‘here’ to the above question.  So what do we need to do? Well, where to start…

I really believe that the city needs thriving town centre’s that genuinely offer an alternative to supermarket shopping, and where you can get most of what you require within a short walking distance from each other. They clearly work, just go to Soho Rd, Alum Rock Rd, or Stratford Rd and see what a thriving town centre based around food shops looks like. We need high streets in South Birmingham particularly where you can go and get a decent loaf of bread, basics like milk, eggs and proper store-cupboard ingredients, good quality fresh fruit and veg, free range or organic meat, some nice cheese, a decent bottle of wine or some nice beers, and at the end of all that to eat somewhere that cooks good food from fresh ingredients to a decent standard.

We need a council who genuinely strive to create thriving town centres too. All too often, the council is willing to usher in major projects (supermarkets) every few years and call them regeneration, when day-to-day, year-to-year small local shops are not being supported enough. We need business rate breaks for start-ups, shop improvement grants, an easier planning system, strategic plans for town centres, town centre managers, council officers researching grants and possible investors in small retail etc etc. I’m sure Birmingham is not the worst when it comes to this, but it certainly has a lot to improve on, and the council seems little concerned with anything outside of the city centre. Even in the city centre they’re threatening to close down and break up the wholesale markets which will be the biggest tragedy to ever hit this city’s food culture in my opinion.

We need more risk takers too, there are way too many naysayers around and not enough people willing to put their money where their mouth is. From taking a punt on your local shop, to taking a punt and creating your local shop. If you want a market in your neighbourhood, set one up, it really isn’t that difficult. If you want a proper food festival, get organising one. If you want to set up a microbrewery, get a group together and start writing a business plan. If you need a greengrocer, talk to others about setting up a co-operative. If you want a community garden, talk to your neighbours and get your spade out. You get the idea, be the change you want to see and all that.

There are many places to place the blame for the lacking food culture in Birmingham, but we mustn’t sit around waiting for other people to make things happen. There is a long way to go, and much to do, get on it.

000-00000.com

Click it. That is all.

First up it’s a special bank holiday Monday farmers market and vintage fair at Rowheath Pavillion (a hidden gem) in Bournville. Check out all the details on bournvillevillage.com

Secondly, this years Birmingham Honey Show has moved venue to Martineau Gardens (even more hidden gem) in Edgbaston. Even if you only go to see the gardens it’s certainly worth the visit, but there’ll be lots of honey on offer too presumably. Details on the Martineau Gardens website.

Wholesale Markets (largest in the UK) and Bull Ring Fruit and Veg, Meat and Fish markets.

Social Enterprise/grassroots food businesses – Loaf social enterprise cookery school and bakery, Frost and Snow cupcake bakery providing jobs for the homeless, Change Kitchen vegetarian catering, South Birmingham Food Co-operative, Urban Harvest social enterprise fruit harvesting and processing.

Community and Farmers Markets – Moseley, New Street, University, Kings Heath, Kings Norton, Harborne, Bearwood, Sutton Coldfield, Solihull, Jewellery Quarter (24 carrots), Stirchley Community Market.

Other things worth googling (restaurants bars and cafes): Soul Food Project, Warehouse Cafe, Opus, Anderson Bar and Grill, Jyoti’s vegetarian south indian restaurant (a fave haunt of Jamie Oliver et al), Carters of Moseley, Bitters’n'Twisted pub group, The Wellington (real ale pub), Urban Coffee Company…(shops): Capeling and Co cheesemongers, Stirchley wines and spirits (real ale!), Rossiters Organic Butchers, Leverton and Halls Deli and Coffee Shop, Anderson and Hill Deli, Nima Deli, Al Barakah Lebanese Bakery, Kitchen Garden Cafe.

The second enquiry was the Soil Association asking for what was going on in terms of sustainability and food in Birmingham as they’d received an application from someone at the council for support in developing this, and again they are pitting us against other cities to win the support. Here’s what I recommended (after a lengthy conversation about the lack of vision in this area coming from the council and from health bodies in the city):

Community Gardens/gardening projects: Northfield Eco Centre: http://www.northfieldecocentre.org/; Martineau Gardens: http://www.martineau-gardens.org.uk/; Sense City Edible City: http://www.sensecity.org.uk/?page_id=102; Cotteridge Park Community Orchard: http://www.cotteridgepark.org.uk/index.php?page=orchard; Loads of active allotment sites in Birmingham including the biggest in the UK (Uplands Allotments – great for growing afro-carribean and asian vegetables) and the active Court Lane Allotments: http://courtlaneallotments.com/ who recently had a garden at Gardners World Live.

Social Enterprise/ Co-operative food initiatives: Loaf, South Birmingham Food Co-op (http://bhmfoodcoop.wordpress.com/), Change Kitchen (http://changekitchen.co.uk/), Urban Harvest (http://www.urbanharvestbham.org/), Abundance Birmingham (http://abundancebirmingham.wordpress.com/); Globally Local have a catering enterprise: http://www.globallylocal.net/

Farmers/Community markets: Moseley, New Street, University, Kings Heath, Kings Norton, Harborne, Bearwood, Sutton Coldfield, Solihull, Jewellery Quarter (24 carrots), Stirchley Community Market.

Support groups: Sustainability West Midlands (http://www.sustainabilitywestmidlands.org.uk/); Localise West Midlands (http://localisewestmidlands.org.uk/); Birmingham FoE (http://www.birminghamfoe.org.uk/); Sense City – worked together with localise WM on a local food module at Aston Uni.

NHS: http://www.dietetics.bham.nhs.uk/FoodNet4LIFE/Default.aspx – FoodNet are the main team doing 5-a-day healthy eating stuff in Birmingham.

Is that a fair summary of food things going on in Birmingham would you say or I have missed some glaringly obvious things that deserve to be shouted about? I expect it’s fairly South Birmingham-centric, as that’s where I spend most of my time. Feel free to leave a comment below…

I had a lovely visit from a fella called Rene last week, a former Birmingham University PhD student who now lives and works in his home city in Brazil. He’s a keen home baker and lives as part of an intentional community trying to reduce their impact on the planet and live more self sufficiently. He’s thinking of setting up a community bakery as part of this, and came to have a chat with me whilst he was over here doing some guest lecturing at the Uni. I packed him off with a copy of Knead to Know, a couple of sourdough recipes, and a jam jar of the starter culture for my Cotteridge Sourdough bread. He’s just got back to Brazil and sent me a great picture of his first Cotteridge sourdough loaf, Brazilian style. I love the fact that there’s a small taste of Cotteridge in Brazil now, and a simple mixture of flour and water can help the birth of a new community bakery thousands of miles away! Good luck Rene…

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