Tom Kirby, development manager at Granton Community Gardeners in Edinburgh, speaks to Positive News about why they decided to launch a pay-as-you-can-afford scheme – and what they’ve learned so far.
Positive News: When and how did the bakery begin?
Tom Kirby: In 2019. Before this we had a baking group called Bread Club, which formed when we produced our first sack of flour from Scottish heritage wheat that we’d grown on local street corner community gardens. Scotland The Bread’s Soil to Slice programme had supplied us with the grain to sow, as well as helping us thresh, clean and mill the resulting harvest. The bakery grew out of regular conversations at Bread Club, and realising there was a high demand for our bread after we took orders for a batch we were baking one week.
Why did you decide to launch a pay-as-you-can-afford scheme?
Our bakery is part of Granton Community Gardeners, a local community charity in a less affluent area of Edinburgh. This is a grassroots community organisation that provides opportunities and support for local people to grow, cook and eat food together. We provide regular weekly community meals, free of charge, but where everyone is invited to do something to contribute, from growing the food to collecting dishes.
We’re very aware that many people within our community are under financial stress, including high levels of food insecurity. It was obvious that if we were to provide bread to our local community, we couldn’t charge the prices of similar products in other parts of town. We also needed to pay our baker a fair wage, and were committed to sourcing ingredients as locally as possible.
