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?

I think we have a few FB sellers on here

@rooarsome

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.

I wonder did they sell many!

Our local bakery does lovely ones for a tenner and at least you know it's made in a clean kitchen.

The sweets and chocolates graze table picture earlier in the thread reminded me of that Gillian McKeith programme, You Are What You Eat, where they used to put the hapless participant's normal food for the week onto one table to shame them.

@LolaNova

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.

Yes this! I’ve seen ones where it’s an “afternoon tea” all thrown in a box, sandwiches, sausage rolls, strawberries, Oreos etc just all mingling next to each other. Who wants to eat that far less consider it a “treat”?

And wtaf is a “cakesicle”?

I see these ones on mine! I'm trying to lose weight since lockdown! Wonder who these people are, that can eat graze/sweet boxes, with no worries about their figures!

See this all the time never buy. Another thing is people doing things like baby massage before COVID .
I asked somebody who was doing this from home if they were insured, licensed by LA, DBS checked etc. The post disappeared. Everybody is now doing MLMs now.

@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’ve just ordered two of those bags filled with sweets because DC requested one.

From a registered business with top hygiene certificate etc. Yes they advertised on FB but also have a legit website and I was able to look them up on the council site for their hygiene rating. They had it on their website and the FB page.

I’ve told many of these businesses if they have a hygiene rating to stick it on their FB page as it’s something they should be proud of displaying. Few do.

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.

Agreed. I've seen varying ones on my local fb, some look appetising, some dont, some look ridiculously priced, others look reasonable although I've never bought anything.

Cakesicles are supposed to basically cakepops, shaped like ice creams (after the American Popsicles). But some are confused, as now call cake pops cakesicles.

They sound sickly at any rate.

I see a lot of brownies. I always think ooh sounds delicious, then realise nothing is actually baked in, just laid on top, with some chocolate drizzle if you're lucky.

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

Probably not, but you can see how slip ups would happen: Granny wants to buy the grandkids something nice, sees a FB post and asks the seller if they're dairy free. Seller - who doesn't understand that just because you didn't add cheese/milk etc yourself doesn't mean it doesn't contain dairy, and anyway has long since thrown away the packaging - says no, it doesn't. Granny assures everyone that the sweets are dairy free because she checked...but they're not.

If someone is selling homemade jam they've at least put some work in.

It still needs to be made properly - jars and lids need to be sterilised (and not contaminated again afterwards) and the jam needs not to be full of hair because the maker didn't understand about hair being tied up/covered etc.

I'd perhaps buy it if I knew the owner and knew they had all the relevant food safety certs etc but I wouldn't buy anything off my mates brothers sister who's running one from her home with no assurances of how it's being made or kept even. Can't imagine these places by their nature are as hygiene conscious as the factory up the road is especially during a pandemic.

@IliveonCoffee my local shop does the best brownies, and they have stuff actually in them
Like this one

I always wonder, with the biscuits embedded in the surface of a tray bake... doesn't the biscuit go stale and soggy?

You can't store a slice of cake in a tin with biscuits because the biscuits which should be dry go soggy from the cake, and the cake which should be moist (sorry!) goes dry from the biscuits.

has anyone had one? do the jammy biscuits or whatever go really soggy?

@MammaSchwifty

I always wonder, with the biscuits embedded in the surface of a tray bake... doesn't the biscuit go stale and soggy?

You can't store a slice of cake in a tin with biscuits because the biscuits which should be dry go soggy from the cake, and the cake which should be moist (sorry!) goes dry from the biscuits.

has anyone had one? do the jammy biscuits or whatever go really soggy?

I think you’re meant to eat them straight away! Those biscuits-embedded-on-top snacks always make me about why people are getting bigger. i know some people work out for an hour before breakfast and run a marathon before bed --

@TheYearOfSmallThings

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.

Honestly nothing like a good old-fashioned church cake. Not much to look at but yuuum

@SchrodingersImmigrant

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 🙄

It's entirely legal to make and sell food from home, but you do need to be registered with the council, insured and so on. VAT is the same too - not applicable until you reach the turnover threshold (£85k, from memory), which would be very good going for 1 or 2 people working from a domestic kitchen.

That business model is open to you if you wish to use it - why don't you?

For what it's worth the majority of traders at my local street food market prep their food in their domestic kitchen, though they are all registered, insured, HACCP etc. I think many would be surprised how many entirely legitimate food businesses are run from domestic kitchens.

What a snobby thread. People are making a product to sell and some people see value in their product and want to buy it. The boxes aren't for everyone obviously so if you don't like the look of it or think it's a health risk, scroll on by.

There is also no shame in charging a mark up on goods sold. A designer handbag that costs about £30 for raw materials and labour sells for £3000. It's not for me, that's not how I choose to spend my money but I don't vilify `Chanel for charging that much or other women for buying them. That's how the capitalist system works. If someone is dumb enough to pay a high price for a product the manufacturers would be stupid to charge a lower price.

Constantly banging on about 'I could make it myself for XX pence is so joyless. Whenever we took my MIL to a restaurant she would be horrified at the prices and complain that she could make it herself for less and of course she could have done, if she had the skills, the equipment or any inclination to cook anything more fancy than the plain meat and 2 veg my FIL preferred. She would order the plainest cheapest thing in the menu and sit tutting over it. It sucked all the fun out of the evening for us and for her and after a while we stopped taking her with us.

I currently pay a cleaner £12.50 an hour to clean my house. Is my cleaner ripping me off for charging so much for something I could do myself for nothing? Of course not. She's offered a service at a price and I've chosen to accept it. If I wasn't interested I would have ignored her ad like I do the ones for designer handbags and graze boxes.

@Garliccoriander

See this all the time never buy. Another thing is people doing things like baby massage before COVID . I asked somebody who was doing this from home if they were insured, licensed by LA, DBS checked etc. The post disappeared. Everybody is now doing MLMs now.

Have a lady who does massage and I’m pretty sure she’s none of those things. But she does an amazing job so 🤷‍♀️ (But it’s maybe different if they are working with babies)

Mmmmmmm

I'm not on FB but constantly saw people packing their sweets on a bed without gloves.

No thanks, pal.

On TikTok*

@Redskyyy

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.

It's not a legal requirement to provide allergen labelling on the pack for PPDS until October. Until then, an allergen matrix document is legally sufficient.

*when selling direct to the public I might add. Food sold via a gift box company would need full ingredient and allergen labelling now.