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?

Woman on ours was selling plastic cups filled with some kind of chocolate layer, with a biscuit stuck in the top and some kind of brownies. Saying she would be in the "main carpark" between 5 and 7. Then at 6pm she posted again to confirm where she was, was actually the main carpark? Didn't seem dodgy at all 🤢

You know what? It's often desperate people trying to make a bit of money.

So is it OK that they're breaching food safety laws - laws that were brought in to protect people - and could be easily selling feed that puts people at risk, particularly those with severe allergies, because they don't know what they're doing?

Yummy gastroenteritis!

Here it is

@BrightYellowDaffodil

You know what? It's often desperate people trying to make a bit of money.

So is it OK that they're breaching food safety laws - laws that were brought in to protect people - and could be easily selling feed that puts people at risk, particularly those with severe allergies, because they don't know what they're doing?

What Brightyellowdaffodil said!

@thecatsarecrazy

Here it is

She's handling that cake with her glove-less hands- boak!

@askingrandomsonlinemighthelp

You know what? It's often desperate people trying to make a bit of money. Times are hard for a lot of people. It's so upsetting that people are ready to rip the piss out of them. Just leave them to it. My mum used to have to sell jam to try to scrape by when we were kids. Who are you people to be mocking others? Awful bunch of bellends.

This. Mumsnet is so full of snobs

Also aren't graze tables just buffets?

@askingrandomsonlinemighthelp

Yeah but homemade jam is yum, not available in shops, contains just fruit, sugar and pectin plus back in ye olde days a jar of jam would last a person a month. The sweets are overpriced, bought online and encourage people to eat that shite.

@askingrandonsonlinemighthelp You've got a good point - a lot of these little 'at-home' food businesses have sprung up through desperation and need. In the interests of disclosure, food hygiene training is what I do for a living, so I have a commercial interest here.
There has been a lot of media attention on the home food businesses that are not registered and don't follow hygiene guidelines, but the local authorities are so under resourced, they are not in a position to either advise or clamp down - and clearly good advice would be the preferable outcome in a lot of cases.
I did publish a short blog piece to help people setting up a home food business properly - will post here, but aware it might be against the rules and taken down....
www.thesaferfoodgroup.com/knowledge/?p=442

The latest here is messy play boxes

Making jam is different to chucking bags of Poundland sweeties into a pizza box and selling it for ten times the cost though.

@sickofpainting

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

This gives me the ick all over.

I wouldn’t buy from someone without their food hygiene certs. There has been a crackdown by me on people offering foodstuff without a rating - it’s illegal.

It’s the ‘arts and crafts’ that I find more puzzling as some of them are truly awful. I do understand that people are struggling to get by at the moment though so I get it. Who is buying this stuff though?

My SIL was doing something similar and I cringed. Thankfully didn't last long.
Cardboard packaging box, shredded coloured craft tissue, unwrapped sweets and chocolates and random fluffy Easter chicks and bunnies.
She has 2 dogs who cast like mad and I know for a fact they lick dinner plates and drink leftover tea from mugs.
She had most of the village ordering.
Madness

@askingrandomsonlinemighthelp selling jam would be great. It’s tasty, there’s effort and you didn’t just empty a packet of biscuits into a carrier bag and charge a tenner for doing so.

YANBU. I am aghast generally about how many people have popped up selling food products during the past year. No inspections by the council, no food hygiene nothing, no insurance...nothing put in place for allergies.

Someone mentioned this on a local FB group and got torn to shreds by the huns who defended it, by saying people were just trying to earn a living. Well, guess what, so are the reputable companies that these people are massively undercutting, who actually have all the licenses and documentation in place and have to charge a little more to cover their overheads.

Also aren't graze tables just buffets?
It's a buffet without serving dishes / plates!

The sweet box / cone thing appears on local FB groups now and again, also the bunch of multipack chocolate bars and "grazing boxes" with a load of cheese, meat and olives etc in a box, if you're lucky your dessert course will be mixed in among the savoury foods! Gross and don't get me started on the "vegetarian cheese charcuterie box" advert!

I've never heard of this craze before, but looking at the photos, no wonder there is an obesity problem amongst adults and children these days! Why do people feel the need to constantly provide food for every moment of the day? 3 square meals is quite sufficient.

[quote sickofpainting]@EmbarrassingMama £15 for this bargain! [/quote]
Really embarrassing. Looks like it's been put together by a six year old.

Agree, these need to be cracked down on.

PILs got us an ‘afternoon tea box’ during lockdown last year and honestly, I do appreciate the thought but it was awful. You could tell someone had picked up all the cheapest ‘bits’ they could afford and lobbed it all together in a box, so that the sandwich fillings were touching the cakes

When they delivered it it wasn’t even cold, and it came with the bottle of ‘bubbly’ that looked (and tasted) like it cost about £4. It was the only thing I tried, we threw the rest away. Even DH only managed a mouthful of one of the cakes, and he’ll eat anything.

Yep these are everywhere. Totally grim.

As an aside, whoever thought inventing the word 'cakesickle' could possibly be a good thing? Coming up with a cutesy cockapoo type word for a foodstuff and managing to end up having the word 'cake' right next to the word 'sick'

Winner

The graze tables aren't a buffet, literally everything is touching. I'm not a germaphobe by any stretch but would have struggled with that pre CV.

@thecatsarecrazy

Here it is

Boxes of type II diabetes and obesity...and yes, tummy upset into the bargain...

I get that people are desperately looking for ideas to make some money but it's the fact that they seem to think people are utterly stupid - the mark ups put on these things are simply laughable! Boxes of cheap jumbled up biscuits costing 2 or 3 quid on sale for £15 or even £20 etc, it's a joke.