The Greater Manchester lifeline offering struggling families a £9 food shop

A non-profit organisation is helping families in Greater Manchester stay afloat in the cost of living crisis - by offering them a weekly shop for less than a tenner.

For £8.50, members of the Bread and Butter Thing pick up three bags of groceries, with fruit and veg, cupboard staples and fridgeables. The ‘mobile food club’ picks up ‘surplus food’ from supermarkets to bring discounted groceries to areas heavily affected by food poverty.

One of those areas is Holts Village, a social housing complex in Alexandra, Oldham. In the middle of a sprawling residential area, an unassuming shop-front becomes the base of operation for the charity every Friday morning.

Volunteers pack several crates of food that supermarkets can’t sell - from oddly shaped veg to foods that are ‘out of season’ or past their sell-by (but not their use-by dates) - into more than 120 shopping bags with military-style precision.

“It saved my life,” Aga, one of the volunteers who also uses the service, told the M.E.N. “And it saved my wallet.”

Just over a year ago, severe depression had left the trained chef from Poland unable to leave her home. She had to leave her job and was in a ‘dark place’.

She volunteered with the charity to give herself something to take her mind off things and soon started using the service herself.

She said: “It helped me financially because I was out of work. I relied on the bags. And it also gave me a purpose, a place to belong. It was really uplifting.”

Now Aga helps other people who are struggling to keep enough food on the table - especially fresh and healthy produce, which has spiralled in price.

Although food prices have finally started to go down again with lowering inflation, many families are struggling to