We took Loaf on the road last week, for the first time in quite a while.

Last Saturday we were at CoCoMad selling bread, pastries, cold drinks and, once the high street shop closed, anything left over in the bakery. It was great to get out and meet new people, and of course chat to some regulars in a more relaxed environment. We noticed a bit of an uptick in visitors to the shop during the week which might have come from CoCoMad, or it might just be Stirchley high street being unpredictable as usual. Who knows! But we had a good time, met lots of new people, sold more than enough to make it worth while and will definitely be back next year.

Then on Tuesday we had a bread stall at Six Weeks of Summer by the office blocks at 2 & 3 Snow Hill. That’s right – into the city centre! Our motivation was to promote the cookery school to people outside of Stirchley and it was an intriguing toe in the water. We’re keen to try this some more, particularly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when we have capacity to bake extra, so if you have a lead on an office lobby with plenty of foot traffic that would benefit from a pile of sourdough bread for sale, do let us know.

Finally, Wednesday saw Pete representing Loaf at the Co-op National Youth Summit, appearing on a couple of panels. The world of co-operative businesses and organisations is wide and varied so it’s good to bring a worker’s co-op perspective to the proceedings. He obviously didn’t make too many faux pas as we’ve been asked to talk about our new building at the main Co-op Congress which will be held in Birmingham next June. Exciting!