1 Nov 2022

This is the weekly 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 we need your help with some market research, and have an update on your donations to the B30 Food Bank

🍞 Pre-order your bread 🥐

We’ll have plenty of bread and pastries on the shelves all day, with lunches served from noon on weekdays.

Scroll down for this week’s lunch menu, cookery school spaces and community news.

Our opening hours are:
Wednesday: 12-4
Thursday: 12-6
Friday: 12-6
Saturday: 8-1

Last-minute class spaces

We have a small number of cookery school spaces on classes in the next week (at time of writing).

• Wed 2 Nov - Knife Skills & Maintenance
• Thu 3 Nov - Dosa
• Tue 8 Nov - Bread — Back to Basics

We also have a mildly disconcerting number of spaces available on our two Saturday sourdough classes on Sat 12 and Sat 26 November. This is one of our most popular classes on our most accessible day of the week, so if you’ve been wanting to do a sourdough class, now’s a great time - book here!

Over £250 raised for the B30 Food Bank

We’ve been taking donations online and at the counter for the B30 Food bank and during September and October you gave £257.62 in cash, plus loads of packaged food and toiletries that we didn’t get a chance to quantify.

We get regular thank you emails from the food bank but it’s all due to you, our customers, so, on behalf of the B30 Food Bank, thank you!

Here’s a list of what’s urgently needed.

Tell us what we don’t know!

We’ve identified a massive gap in our knowledge. We don’t know how people find out about our cookery school! So to fill this gap we’d like to get some market research help direct from the source, our customers.

We have a super-short survey of three questions that shouldn’t take you more than three minutes, honest!

So, what are we looking for?

Our cookery school classes teach you to cook and bake, but they’re also an enjoyable and enriching communal experience. We want to reach more people who are looking for enjoyable and enriching experiences. But we don’t know where they’re looking!

It boils down to a couple of things.

What do you, the people who pay for our classes, consider them to be similar to? When you’re spending +/- £100 on an activity like one of our classes, what else are you considering that isn’t cooking? What is our competition here?

Next, we’d like to know where you look for these things. If you search Google, what do you search for? Do you check travel sites like Tripadvisor or more local listings? Do you subscribe to newsletters like I Choose Birmingham? Do you follow specific people or companies on social media?

We’re doing this because we want to expand the cookery school over the next few years to reach a wider range of people. Sold-out classes will enable us to develop more accessible courses and increase our community activities in Stirchley. So any tips you can give us will be invaluable.

There are just three questions that shouldn’t take more than three minutes of your time. We don’t need to know who you are and we won’t use the information for anything else.

Click here for the survey.

Thanks for your help!

Lunches this week

Wednesday

• Curry: Tarka daal with sourdough (Ve)

Thursday

• Soup: Roast mushroom and rocket soup with sourdough (Ve)

Friday

• Curry: Butternut squash, kale and lentil curry with sourdough (Ve)
• Salt beef on challah

Wed — Fri

• Sourdough pizza: Sweet potato, shredded sprout, pepperoni and mozzarella (V)
• Ham and cheese croissant
• Pine nut pesto and cheese croissant (V)

Wed — Sat:

• Sausage rolls
• Vegetable rolls (V)

Lunches are made fresh weekdays for 12 noon.

Our menu for the week — with ingredients and allergens — is on the website.

Cookery school classes

The following classes have spaces as of this newsletter being posted.

Loaf’s all-day classes:

• Bread — Back to Basics: Tue 8 Nov
• Simply Sourdough: Sat 12 Nov, Sat 26 Nov
• Sweet Breads and Viennoiserie: Tue 22 Nov

Haseen’s evening classes:

• Dosa: Thu 3 Nov
• Thaali: Wed 30 Nov

Lap’s all-day classes:

• Sausage & Charcuterie: Tue 29 Nov

Lap’s evening classes:

• Knife Skills & Maintenance: Wed 2 Nov

We release new dates as soon as possible, based on tutor availability. You can sign up to alert lists for specific classes here.

Thanks for all your continued support. See you next week!

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

Website: loaf.coop
Socials: Instagram / Twitter / Facebook