Sweet boxes on Facebook?! 🤢

[Thewiseoneincognito]

I’m a member on a local Facebook buy swap group and it’s constantly spammed with people selling pizza boxes filled with sweets often photographed on a fluffy dog hair infested rug. Does anyone else see them? Does anyone even buy them? The same with the strawberries dipped in chocolate that look absolutely disgusting are another thing I see a lot. What delights do you see on your FB groups?

Ah I see loads of these, especially around valentines day, Easter and Christmas. Some of them look quite unappealing but there are others that are quite impressive and well presented. Lots of people selling traybakes of old-school School desserts (think vanilla crunch etc). I've never bought any because I can just make it if I want it.

There’s so much homemade crap on there that looks like something produced by primary school children. I always wonder who buys any of it. 😬

I see a lot of homemade “old school” cakes or meal prepped food (particularly Asian cuisine). Whenever anyone asks about hygiene certs they always get super defensive and rude sometimes. People are asking for the shits when buying food from Facebook tbh especially when they’re not able to produce basic hygiene info. I wish there was an option to report these.

Some people are getting bit fed up by people selling food items from home. Whether it's sweets or food, they can massively undercut actual businesses because they have fraction of outgoings. No hygiene certs, no haccps, no insurance, rents, staff costs, fucking vat and so on.
It needs to be cracked on 🙄

Yuk seriously? I'm not on fb, I'm imagining a packet of haribo tipped into last nights pizza box and to be presented on a rug on the floor. I hope no one buys them.

I have bought pizza boxes but from a proper home business with hygiene certs. She also does party trays, afternoon tea boxes, favours etc.

For some reason my mil bought my kids sweets for easter like this, finally got it out of her that it was £15 for a clear ziplock bag full of really horrid sweets, with an Easter sticker on them. What the hell she was thinking I don't know.

The sweets went in the bin - the kids couldn't even eat them.

There was a lady on my hometown Facebook local page who was making roasts over Christmas. £10 would get you a plate of Aunt Bessies, paxo and Bernard Matthew’s turkey slices and tinned peas 🤢

Same with the afternoon teas. I saw one recently which was a couple of butties with a bit of spread, half a sausage roll each, 2 cheap looking scones and a few grapes and crisps scattered on for £15.

Yes and they always look stale and rock hard! I often what kind of people want to spend £15 on rancid stale sweets, in inappropriate packaging.

Photos please

I get that in These Covid Times people might want to treat either themselves or friends/family and these boxes are post-able, hence their popularity.

But no way would I be buying random stuff off the internet where there doesn't seem to be any hygiene, food safety etc. I'm the first to admit to eating food past its use-by date but only ever for myself - I cook a lot for others, both in terms of meals in my house and jams/chutneys etc that I give as presents and I'm very, very careful with food others will consume.

Do these people have registered businesses, record-keeping, allergen notices etc? I would wager good money they don't, even though it's required by law (www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/starting-a-food-business-from-home). Covid is no bloody excuse!

And that's before we start on the prices these people charge - I've seen half a dozen - HALF A DOZEN! - brownies on sale for nearly £15 once the postage was added. Fuck me, I could make trays of the things for that price, even if I was buying all the ingredients from Waitrose!

Loads of these have popped up on my FB since the first lockdown. No I haven't bought them, they look crap and tbh I don't get the point. Presumably bored people who want to run a 'business' in lockdown

@EmbarrassingMama £15 for this bargain!

Nope, this is one of the many reasons I refuse to do Facebook any more. Far too much of this rubbish. So many sad, desperate people on Facebook it’s depressing.

I also don't like new grazing table craze I do t like the idea of everyone touching the same food and the food is touching each other hahah

[quote sickofpainting]@EmbarrassingMama £15 for this bargain! [/quote]
£15 for that 🤦🏻‍♀️

Cellophane cones of cheap cash n carry sweets or bath toiletries seem popular on my local FB pages, Also “bouquets” of sweets and chocolates. The Chester the constituents the better!

I hate all this kind of thing.

For a start it’s encouraging a complete lack of portion control, total disregard for health and is likely to encourage binge eating.

A colleague started making up the “graze” type boxes or big glass bowls filled with loads of different sweets and chocolate just for her household for Christmas and Easter a few years ago. Then it got bigger, like the graze tables, set up on the living room table and corner tables. Then Christmas started happening in November and Easter was starting three weeks before, then the same for the month of October for Halloween. Now it’s all the time. Her, her husband and two adult kids just constantly spend their evenings and weekends dipping their hands into these giant fishbowls or pumpkins or bunny baskets filled with Poundland sweets like Haribo, Swizzles plus Lindor truffles,
M&Ms etc and they also have savoury bowls and get brownies and cupcakes made and delivered too. She’s constantly sending us all pictures of us asking if we are jealous, usually with an after shot of loads of empty wrappers and packets saying they’ve enjoyed themselves.

No. We all think you are greedy pigs with no self control and actually it’s nausea provoking to see. They’ve also got dogs, house rabbits and other pets who no doubt lick, sniff and paw everything they are eating.

@sickofpainting that graze box! So she's thinking your kids are happily watching a film and you decide to Chuck a load of old sweets and shit in a box to encourage them to gorge for no particular reason and I'm not weird about food and sweets, I eat too much junk in fact but that's ridiculous.

No chance I would buy any of that. It might come from the cleanest kitchen in the Northern Hemisphere, but then again - it might not.

@sickofpainting phenomenal! Thanks for sharing. That is, indeed, lunacy. I think it's the jammy dodgers that get me...

Never heard of a graze table until now, off to Google but can't already imagine. . . . Environmental health can get involved if you report them, but guess they'll only bother if there is an actual health issue/outbreak from one of the sellers products

I saw someone selling the pizza sweet boxes and also had some mugs for sale on marketplace- photographed on the grottiest, dirtiest looking worktop I've seen with tea stains still on the mugs...

Loads of chocolate/sweet 'bouquets' here (selection of multi-pack bars tied up with a bit of ribbon for ££££ more than it would have cost to but some nice chocolates).

There's also someone who started selling decorated bottles in the first lockdown. They started off looking quite nicely painted, then then there was a phase where they all just had NHS painted on them (seemingly by a toddler). Recently she has discovered some sort of light that fits in them. Initially they were decorated with a light inside, but now she just seems to be shoving a light inside (the labels are still). She's also asking for people to donate empty bottles. So basically now she's asking locals to give her a bottle and pay £10 for her to chuck in a light that's probably about £1 max on Amazon. Since she's still doing it I can only assume someone must be buying them!