Hello everyone,

Fliss and Dorit here with the weekly update from Loaf while keeping waiting for GSA 🙃🙃🙃

Opening times:

🟢 Wednesday 5th August, 12pm to 3pm at Deadbeat, Stirchley

🟢 Thursday 6th August, 12pm to 3pm at Deadbeat, Stirchley

🟢 Friday 7th August, 12pm to 3pm at Deadbeat, Stirchley

🟢 Saturday 8th August, 11am to 3pm at Deadbeat, Stirchley

No set lunch menu for this week!

Apologies, but due to sharing the kitchen with Lap-fai Lee’s pop up at Deadbeat (see more info below), we will be assessing our lunch options each day and ask you to check our Instagram and Facebook stories for updates. Or just pop around to the shop!

Pre-order Info

➡️ Click HERE to pre-order bread and buns for Wednesday till Saturday. If you don’t want to pre-order that’s alright, we always have more to sell, but we try not to let anything go to waste, so pre-orders are very helpful.

➡️ Cut-off time for all pre-orders is 11am on the day before pick up!

Thanks so much to STEAMHOUSE for their continued support in letting us use a corner of their bakery in Redditch - we honestly do not know what we would have done without their generosity. 💛 💛 💛

Loaf on Tour in Numbers

These last 5 months have been anything but plain sailing for all of us at Loaf. When we left our old premises on 23rd February we believed we would only be ‘nomads’ for a month or two, and yet here we are 5 months later, still without a premises and being continuously strung along by GSA. The building now looks finished, but alas, we are still waiting for the completion certificates and documents to be finalised and for GSA to finally give us a completion date.

We are just one part of the struggle. Everyone who has worked for 10+ years to get this project off the ground continues to face an uncertain future as GSA continues to withhold the cost of the building, and rejects the many offers the team at SCD have made to buy it. There are people who thought they would be moving into their new home, where rent would be managed by the tenants of the building, in September 2025 and now, nearly a year on, all of those people are still waiting. They are now also facing the threat that GSA won’t honour the list of co-op tenants, and instead give the flats to those on the waitlist for Birmingham City Council social housing. Artefact and Birmingham Bike Foundry are in the same position as us. Artefact have also been patiently waiting for a new premises, and Birmingham Bike Foundry can’t operate fully as a business until they are allowed to trade in their new purpose-built unit in the SCD. 

Despite the struggles, we have kept chugging on and have managed to continue to make bread and buns to sell each week. We are affectionately calling this period “Loaf on Tour”, as we continue to meander through this very uncertain time. 

To illustrate the continued upheaval that this period has caused, we have calculated many quite surprising numbers that have gone into making this period work:

Hours worked at Steamhouse: 1468 hours

Hours worked from home: 242 hours

Hours driven to Redditch and back: 102 hours

Volunteers who have helped with the driving: 5

How many 3am alarms to get to Redditch: 65

How many people have Loaf items in their houses: 6

Independent businesses who have helped us with letting us stay at their spaces with our shop pop up: 4

How many miles Rach has put on her car driving to Redditch for Loaf: 1830 miles

How much money spent on storage units: £6325

Potential Cookery School Courses missed: 57

Course places that couldn’t be filled due to being closed: 604

Meetings at the British Oak: 16

Lost income due to not having our own premises: £109,208

This has only been possible thanks to the help of other independents, who have amazingly let us use or trade out of their space each week without fail. One good thing that has come from this period is the connections we’ve made with other businesses like Steamhouse Bakery, Deadbeat, Verbena and Anosh Speciality Coffee. Not to mention Pip and co at Birmingham Artisan Markets, The Shed in Cotteridge Park and Grace and James in Kings Heath. Without them, Loaf as we know it would no longer exist. We hope these relationships will continue, even when we are settled in our new home. 

It also wouldn’t be possible without all of our customers continuing to support us by buying our bread at pop-ups and markets and donating to our Crowdfunder. There would be no Loaf at all without any of you and we are eternally grateful that you have hopefully ensured the longevity of Loaf for hopefully many more years to come. 

We’re not out of the woods yet. With the continued ambiguous attitude and avoidance behaviour from GSA, we still don’t have a moving date yet, and the costs of storage continue to knock us down every month. Our reserves are minimal, and we are currently running the risk of not having enough money to move all our stuff over from storage and buy crucial equipment so we can bake and run cookery school courses in the new premises. We realise that so many people have already donated to our Crowdfunder but if you haven’t already or can help again we would really appreciate it to help us cross the finish line, while we keep chasing GSA to finally give us a deal.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-loaf-move-to-the-stirchley-co-operative

Thank you for all your support and we just can’t wait to be in the new space doing what Loaf does best.

Team Loaf x

Loaf tutor Lap-fai Lee at Deadbeat in August!

Starting this week Fire + Rice aka Lap-fai Lee will have a one month residency at Deadbeat every Wednesday to Friday evening with a full-throttle Asian feasting series. Kicking things off with whole roasted Cantonese piglets, then rolling into weekly changing menus packed with big flavours and generous sharing plates, all in Lap’s signature style. There will be signature cocktails curated by Lucky 7 and wines selected by Grace + James to keep things flowing all night.

In the final week you can expect collaboration dinners with guest chefs and more drinks experience with Lucky 7.

Bookings only! For booking requests please email:
[email protected]

Thanks for all the continued support & see you soon!

Team Loaf

Fliss, Neil, Mina, Rach, Pete, Dave, Dorit, Molly, Michael & Kate

👉 Support the crowdfunder here

Website: loaf.coop

Updates on: Instagram

Review us on: Google | Tripadvisor