8 August 2023
This is the weekly-ish newsletter from Loaf in Stirchley, keeping you abreast of our bakery and cookery school, and other news we think you might be interested in.
This week is a bit of a co-op special! Two new co-operative organisations are on their way in Birmingham, plus applications are open to live in the housing co-op in our new building (which needs a name).
Please note that our summer shutdown starts next week. We'll be closed from Tuesday 15 to Thursday 24 August. If you need to stock up, you have until this Saturday.
Scroll down for this week’s lunch menu and community news.
🍞 Pre-order your bread and pastries 🥐
We’ll have plenty on the shelves all week, with lunches served from noon on weekdays.
Our bakery opening hours are:
Tue - Fri: 12 - 6
Saturday: 8 - 1
Loaf will be closed for our annual summer shutdown from Tuesday 15 to Thursday 24 August. Our last day of trading will be this Saturday 12 August and we'll be open again on Friday 25 August.
If you need to stock up, we strongly recommend pre-ordering so we can bake extra if needed. The cut-off time for Friday and Saturday collections is 10am Thursday morning.
During the closure we'll be giving the bakery, cookery school and shop some care and attention and catching up on all those non-urgent but still important jobs, getting us ship-shape for the rest of 2023.
We'll be releasing the September and October cookery school class dates by this weekend. If you're keen to do a specific class and would like to be one of the first to hear, sign up to the alert lists here.
In need of affordable housing in Stirchley? Like the idea of living in a co-op run apartment block above a bakery, bike shop and art cafe? Applications are now open for flats in our building, which is currently taking shape on Stirchley high street.
Speaking of which, we've long realised we need to give our building a name. 'The Stirchley Co-operative Development Building' is too much of a mouthful and will get confusing when we start work on the next one (yes, there are already plans for another one).
But where to begin? How does one name a building? Not for the first time in this project we're in uncharted territory and could do with a nudge.
If you have an idea for what our building could he called, please enter it in this very short form. There's no prize and a very high chance we won't use it, but there's also a chance it'll set us off in the right direction.
York Supplies is one of the worst-kept best secrets of Kings Heath – an old-school hardware and gardening store where you can find anything you need, and if that's one nail then you can just buy one nail. We're big fans and were quite distraught when it was announced that Jon Jaffa, the owner and heart and soul of the business, was retiring and selling up.
Over the last year a group of customers, with support from Co-ops UK, put together a plan to save the business and, more importantly, maintain the community spirit of the business that Jon has nurtured over the decades. Here's Barbara Nice to explain it.
If successful, the business will be reborn as a York Supplies Community Co-op. Anyone who invests at least £100 can become a member with voting rights, meaning the business will effectively be owned by the customers in the community. They need to raise £300,000 from shares which will then be matched by the Community Ownership Fund, giving Jon a fair price to retire on.
The share offer ends on 7 September. You can invest (and note this is an investment, not a donation) by filling in this form.
MIST is an emerging immigration advice co-op that hopes to launch soon and provide services that have apparently not been available in the region for the last six months. They're having a fundraising event at The Edge in Digbeth on 25 August where you can find out more about their plans.
🥖 These are fascinating plans from Slow Food Birmingham to turn the top floor of Vyse St car park in the Jewellery Quarter into an urban farm. Is the solarpunk utopia actually going to emerge in Birmingham?
🥖 If the long-haired Brummie on Channel 4's new survival show Alone looks familiar, that's because he's Stirchley resident Alan from Sustainable Life who you may have seen running foraging workshops along the Rea. There's a nice interview with him on the radio here (2h20m in) where he's flying the flag for autistic loners. Go Alan!
🥖 Kings Heath Action for Refugees have a really good newsletter, packed with information about what they're up to and the issues they're helping with.
🥖 Better Streets for Birmingham is a road safety campaign group that, it seems, are having some success countering the blight of car dependency in our city – see this recent article in the Guardian. You can join here.
If you’ve got news or an event in Loaf’s wheelhouse (some variation on bread / community / cooperatives), let us know at newsletter@loaf.coop
Lunches are made fresh weekdays for 12 noon.
Our menu for the week — with ingredients and allergens — is on the website.
Thanks for all your continued support. See you next week!
Team Loaf: Sarah, Ian, Rach, Nancy, Molly, Dave, Dorit, Pete, Neil & Martha
Website: loaf.coop
Socials: Instagram / Mastodon / Twitter / Facebook