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?

There are is a market for this stuff but why on earth people buy it is anyone's guess. i don't have fb but i see enough on here to put me off for life.

£21 on my local one for 2 stirrers 2 ‘hot chocolate bombs’ and 2 hollow hearts filled with 4 or 5 haribo

I have never seen anything like this on Facebook, but it looks horrendous.
So much junk...No nutritional value in any of it.

I am not the healthiest of eaters, but the sight of all that sugar made me feel ill...

Home made jam is quite different, as is honey. I have bought honey from local bee keeper at a market.

they look quite pretty but £21
It’s not clear if she has a LA hygiene certificate either

I have a 5 star hygiene rating on my kitchen (for mixing complementary therapy shit together. Never used it as I went in another direction). I've missed a trick here, haven't I?

@IceSwallowCome

Why is selling jam on FB any better or different than baking cakes? So one kind of unhealthy food laden with sugar is acceptable, but another kind of unhealthy food laden with sugar is "shite"?

Nice to see the obesity crisis/crippling nhs/everyone else except me lives in a contaminated shithole warriors out in force for this thread. No one is holding you at gunpoint and forcing you to buy and eat cakes from facebook.

Because most people when they eat jam only have a teaspoonful or so on their toast? Hardly the same as eating a big slice of cake full of butter, sugar, chocolate and white flour. Also jam is much less likely to be contaminated with bacteria because of how it is made and put in the jar. It's why it's called a 'preserve'.

YANBU, these always look grim and absolutely shit

I wonder how many of them have food hygiene or are permitted to conduct a food business from home.

@seensome

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.

You say you are not on facebook and yet you describe the offering so accurately ...!

@RedcurrantPuff

YANBU, these always look grim and absolutely shit

I wonder how many of them have food hygiene or are permitted to conduct a food business from home.

The ones on my local look ok tbh but it’s the eye watering price it’s ridiculous

One of my Facebook friends keeps sharing a post advertising 6 large cookies in a box for £12. They look identical to the £1 ones in a paper bag from Tesco.

Last year one of my friends started doing Sunday dinners delivered. She is an actual chef, worked in London hotels, has a kitchen with an excellent hygiene rating, sourced all meat and vegetables locally and done quite well with it. Her competition got all their ingredients as cheap as possible and chose the most unflattering photo of a chipped plate wrapped in cling film on the worlds greasiest hob. Yet still managed to sell out each week. She started taking bookings for her limited slots. Madness. My friend then had people complaining that hers was overpriced.

I'm sure this was in the press recently saying how many people had set up these "businesses" and that local authorities would crack down on it, but I think there will always be a market for it; fools and their money easily parted etc

@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?

I'd hope that those with severe allergies wouldn't touch these sort of things with a barge pole

Both DS and I have allergies and we certainly wouldn't!

I keep seeing photos of grazing boxes type things on SM. They actually turn my stomach. Individually or in a buffet situation the charcuterie, fruit, cheese, breads etc. Would all be lovely but the idea of them all getting soggy in a box together just seems really rank to me.

If someone is selling homemade jam they've at least put some work in. I still probably wouldn't buy it if I didn't know they had hygiene certificates and stuff. But emptying some cheap shop bought biscuits and sweets into a cardboard box and charging 3 times as much because you've called it a treat box is just rank and lazy.

I think a lot of people just aren't as squeamish as the average Mumsnetter.

In normal times I will swing by a local Methodist Church because the ladies host a cake sale. I've eaten dozens of uncertified cakes with no ill effects.

And I sometimes find the best cakes look like they have been made by primary school children. The really ornate homemade ones are often drab pound cake entombed in a ton of fondant icing. I'd rather have a good fresh butterfly bun.

Have seen some absolutely shit ones on my local FB - the best (or the shittiest) was a box full of loose sweets like haribo and maltesers and one solitary triangle of Toblerone from a 360g bar. Just the thought of somebody's ungloved hands breaking off the piece of Toblerone turned my stomach.

If that makes me snobby - so be it!

£25

Yes but your Methodist ladies have made the cakes themselves and aren’t charging rip off prices. They’re not just buying a few bits, throwing it in a box and fleecing people.

Could you actually see the dog hair? Or are you just being a snob?

I couldn’t get mad about people just trying to make a bit of money. No one is forced to buy them.

Ah, I’ve bought from bake sales many times but I stay well clear of the ones that look like they’re made by children!

I’ve done so much baking with my nanny charges over the years and I always do a separate batch that I know they’ve had no hand in to take home to eat 😂 the ones they’ve snotted over, wiped a sticky finger around, picked their noses and scabs into, dipped their toys into for a ‘swim’ whilst mixing are for them and the parents only who haven’t borne witness to the process 😂😂

Our local FB pages are absolutely packed full of these! I think it's because grazing tables were very 'insta celeb' a while ago and they got them from places like this grapeandfig.com/ for a gazillion pounds, or more likely #gifted #ad

Now everybody is doing them but they're full of cut-up Aldi pork pies and 29p packets of crackers and the like!

Yes but your Methodist ladies have made the cakes themselves and aren’t charging rip off prices. They’re not just buying a few bits, throwing it in a box and fleecing people.

True. But in hygiene terms the risk is possibly more, and that seems to be what many people object to. Especially dogs, and I'm willing to bet the good Methodist ladies have Jack Russells/Westies/Yorkies at home!

@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

Kit Kats and chocolate fingers are so sophisticated 😄

@YoniAndGuy

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

I thought exactly the same and actually read it first time as "cake sick". Why oh why would anyone think cakesickle was a good name to call something that you are trying to entice people to buy and put in their mouths. It's revolting.

YES. I run a small gift box company and was looking for a local chocolate supplier recently. Asked on the local fb group and got lots of messages from people. Of the 6 I went back to, 1 had a hygiene certificate. Just one. The rest didn’t put allergen labels on their products despite it being a legal req now. I really feel for the ‘proper’ businesses that they are undercutting.