Thread by @steveparks

£20 for a boiled egg, one piece of toast and a mug of tea?

The story of a modern London cafe...

(Read to end of thread before commenting!)

So this is the cafe. Just near Wood Street overground station. It’s nothing flashy...

The menu is basic too. The sign outside boasts that it is ‘the smallest menu in wood street’ !
It only does boiled eggs (not eggs in any other way), toast, jam, porridge. Mix those in any way you like. It also does tea or coffee.
It doesn’t do takeaway, you have to eat in...

But then you get to the boiled eggs, and it’s self service!
They have an egg boiling station. You pop your egg in a little holder and then lower it into the boiler...

... you can grab one of the timers to get your egg just right...

...meanwhile you take a slice of bread and toast it (self service again), then you grab a mug of tea and find a seat. Time to tuck in...

Delicious. Love a boiled egg and soldiers.

Next up, take your plate and cutlery back, scrape the food waste into a special bin, and stack the dirty crockery ready to be washed. Pay £20. Have a chat, and then get back to your day...

“£20 for a boiled egg and soldiers?!?!” I hear you say, “what kind of hipster millennial middle-class privileged London tosh is this?”

Well... here’s the thing... like the rest of the UK, but perhaps amplified, London has a really massive problem with inequality...

On one hand there is a finance sector where juniors can expect bonuses of five figures on top of generous salaries, and senior staff can expect bonuses of hundreds of thousands and into the millions.

In the middle there’s a whole load of people living fairly comfortably...

But then there’s the shocking fact that 28% of people, in a thriving major capital city, are living in poverty, according to official definitions and statistics
data.london.gov.uk/apps_and_analy…

And poverty is not just about unemployment - it affects people in part-time and full-time employment, because of disparity between stagnant earnings and rising living costs. One in six people are in low-paid jobs.
personneltoday.com/hr/living-hour…

Children are most likely to be affected by poverty. 37% of children in London are living below the poverty line. This affects them in many ways, but lack of food and unhealthy food is a key problem.
google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg…

(The charity @magic_breakfast, run by the amazing @MagicCarmel, has been doing fantastic work in providing healthy energising breakfasts to schoolchildren for years now.)
google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg…

But the problems of poverty in the UK have been rapidly growing in recent years, as highlighted by the recent UN report...
google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg…

Homelessness has spiked massively in the UK, and particularly in London
google.co.uk/amp/s/www.inde…

There are brilliant charities and volunteers that provide food handouts, soup kitchens, food banks and so on.

And this cafe is actually a new (to me at least) approach to that.

It is open to *everyone*, and is “Free - pay what you like, if you like”

The cafe is a just normal cafe, bright and welcoming on the main street people walk down to the station. Nothing to make anyone feel they are ‘other’ if they have breakfast here. In fact, it’s cool!
It’s a place to socialise, as well as eat. The founder is incredibly friendly.

If you want to pay, there’s a small donation box next to where you drop off your dirty plates. But nobody sees, and nobody will notice if you can’t put anything in.

The idea is that if you can afford to put something in, maybe contribute for some other breakfasts too.

And I love the idea. A whole community mixed up together, regardless of background or status, all able to chat and eat a good breakfast, regardless of means. Superb.
As they say on their sign: everybody deserves a good start to the day.

So - although it’s depressing that poverty is such a problem in the UK, and our politicians would rather start fights, playing out their misguided ideologies, than look after our fellow citizens - do take heart from the fact that there are lovely people with ideas like this🥚☕️👏

The End
You can now safely comment without jumping to conclusions 😉

P.S. To clarify, you donate what you like for the breakfast. That can be nothing if you’re hard up. It can be a few quid if you’re able. Or if you realise that you’re pretty lucky in life (as I do) you can decide to donate any amount, subsidising others’ breakfast. No pressure

P.P.S. If you want to go this wonderful little cafe, or send them love or donations, they are @EggsBread1, you can donate on their webpage: eggsandbread.co.uk/support-us/
and find them here: goo.gl/maps/MeTYdecnq…